


Dance with me, darling

by radioactivesaltghoul



Series: The First Order Anniversary Party Saga [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has Issues, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Mutual Pining, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reylo - Freeform, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, kylo ren is needy af, nobody ships reylo harder than the force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-23 05:36:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: “Well,” Ben said, playing with his hands nervously, “I couldn’t let him show me up like that. I have a reputation to uphold, here. I can’t let Hux bring a better date to the party than me.”“What did you do,” she said, suddenly knowing where this was going.“I may or may not have told him that I was bringing you as my date.”A month after her last contact with Ben Solo, he breaks through Rey's mental walls to ask her a favor. In a moment of panic, he told Hux that he was bringing Rey as his date to the annual First Order Anniversary Party, and he promises he'll back off of chasing the Resistance (for now) if she agrees. Unfortunately for Rey, everyone in the Resistance except her thinks this is a good idea, and the next thing she knows, she's flying to Coruscant to be the new Supreme Leader of the First Order's date.





	1. Is this how you ask someone on a date?

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta’d and I am not an expert on the Star Wars universe, so I apologize for any mistakes and/or inaccuracies. It is a crack-y idea that completely ran away from me and became and actual story with actual angst and actual smut.

 It had been a month since the evacuation from Crait. A month since Rey outed herself to the Resistance as a Force user. A month since Luke passed into the Force.

 

A month since she last saw Ben Solo.

 

As much as she tried to busy herself with helping what was left of the Resistance contact allies in the Outer Rim and find new, safe bases to hide on, Rey couldn’t shake the image of Ben’s expression as he knelt on the ground in the now-abandoned base and watched her close the bond.

 

Well, attempt to close the bond, anyway. She could still feel it, deep within her, and no matter how hard she tried to keep it closed off, she still caught flashes of emotions that she knew couldn’t be hers. Usually they were anger and frustration, but she also caught loneliness. It was the last one that broke her heart every time she caught flashes of it, because she and Ben had been so close to filling that same void in her heart, and she couldn’t stand that he had chosen the First Order over being with her and the Resistance.

 

There was another feeling she sometimes got down the bond. This one was more physical than the others. She didn’t have a name for it. It was like loneliness, but it caused heat to pool in her core and sparks to shoot down her spine. And it was like lust, but she knew that taking the matter into her own hands wouldn’t make it go away. (Not that she had a lot of opportunity to do that. They’d spent half of the month on the Falcon, sleeping in shifts on makeshift cots because there were thirty people on a ship meant to hold ten, max.) She got the sense that the man on the other end of the bond was equally frustrated as her, but she didn’t dare open the bond to see.

 

So she threw herself into the Resistance, and into whatever she could cobble together from studying the Jedi texts. She had learned how to distract herself from the heartbreak of being abandoned by her parents by throwing herself into her tasks for survival on Jakku, but this was something different. No matter how hard she tried to distract herself, she couldn’t get Ben out of her head.

 

Finn had tried to get her to open up about what was bothering her, but she didn’t know how to explain it to him. _Oh yeah, I’ve got a Force bond that won’t go away with the new Supreme Leader of the First Order. You know, the one who tried to kill you once? The one who turned the full force of the weapons he brought to Crait on what turned out to be a projection of his former master? Yeah, that one._ Nope, Finn didn’t need to know about that. Nor anyone else, for that matter.

 

But she couldn’t hold out forever. Even though she was as strong as he was--what happened to Luke’s lightsaber proved that--her mental resolve could only hold out for so long. She just had to hope that he gave up before she did.

 

And bad timing on when her resolve actually broke. Less than a day after the Resistance finally found an old rebel base that they deemed safe enough to hide out on, Ben Solo broke through the barriers she’d tried to erect in her mind. Luckily, she was alone in her new room on the base when he appeared to her. Unluckily, she caught him without a shirt on again.

 

“Do you just walk around shirtless when you’re not actively hunting us down?” she hissed to him, trying to look anywhere but his bare chest. It was unfair how attractive he was. Somehow, the scar running down his face and chest made him even more attractive. She didn’t know what it said about her that she felt that way about a scar _she_ had given him.

 

“How do you manage to pick these moments to actually talk to me?” he shot back.

 

“Leave me alone, Ben,” she said. “You’ve made your choice. I have nothing left to say to you.”

 

“I know that’s not true,” he said. “I can feel you. You can’t lie to me.” _You miss me as much as I miss you,_ she felt him say down the bond.

 

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe I do have something left to say to you. But it’s nothing you want to hear, and it’s nothing I haven’t already said before.”

 

“Rey, I need your help,” he said, suddenly sounding awkward.

 

Rey narrowed her eyes. She didn’t like where this was going. “Why would I help you?”

 

“Because I know you,” he said. “I know you on a deep, spiritual level. We’re connected by the Force. This isn’t something Snoke did. This goes deeper than that. And as much as you don’t want to admit it, you can’t escape it.”

 

She huffed. He had her there. Seeing him again, talking him again, was bringing all sorts of feelings back that she thought she had locked away and left on Crait. “Fine,” she said, glaring at him. “What do you want?”

 

“I need a favor,” he said.

 

“What kind of favor?” she asked. She had to admit, she was a little intrigued at these words.

 

“So there’s this big event,” he said.

 

She blinked. When he didn’t continue, she said, “What kind of event?”

 

She could tell that he was nervously searching for the right words to say. Even without the Force bond, it was obvious that he was struggling to ask whatever it was that he wanted to ask her.

 

“A big party,” he said.

 

“What kind of party?” She didn’t like where this was going.

 

“The big kind.”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Spit it out, Ben,” she said. “I don’t have all day.”

 

“Well, Hux was bragging that he managed to get Youm Xizang--you know, the ultra-famous holovid star--as his date.”

 

She didn’t know that, actually. Growing up as a scavenger on a world in East Bumfuck Nowhere didn’t give her a lot of opportunity to watch holovids. “What does this have to do with me?” she asked warily.

 

“Well,” Ben said, playing with his hands nervously, “I couldn’t let him show me up like that. I have a reputation to uphold, here. I can’t let Hux bring a better date to the party than me.”

 

“What did you do,” she said, suddenly knowing where this was going.

 

“I may or may not have told him that I was bringing you as my date.”

 

Rey closed her eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. This wasn’t happening. There was no way that Ben kriffing Solo had forced (no pun intended) his way back into her life just to tell her that he needed a date for some big First Order party.

 

“I’m serious, Rey,” he said. “Please come. Please do this for me. I need this favor.”

 

“Why the hell would I help you?” she spat. “After everything you did to me? Everything you’ve done to the Resistance? Your family?”

 

He winced. “Low blow,” he said, “but I deserved that.”

 

“Yeah, you deserved that. You deserve a lot worse,” she said, her hands twitching. She knew that it wouldn’t hurt him to be hit by a blaster in this state, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t tempted to try.

 

“If you do this for me,” he said, “I promise I’ll hold off and give the Resistance time to recuperate and rebuild.”

 

“How do I know you’ll actually keep that promise?”

 

“You have my word.”

 

“All due respect--by which I mean none--your word isn’t enough for me to trust you. Not anymore,” she said, unable to keep the hurt from traveling down the bond.

 

“You can sense my feelings. You can read my thoughts. You know that I’m telling the truth.”

 

“Maybe,” she said, “but how do I know you won’t change your mind? You have a pretty volatile temper. I can feel it. It’s really pissing me off, actually.”

 

He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m passionate.”

 

She sighed. On the one hand, Ben Solo was most likely insane. On the other hand, the Resistance _did_ need time to recuperate and get in touch with its long-lost allies.

 

“Sleep on it,” he said. “Get back to me in the morning.”

 

“Ben, it’s just after breakfast.” Her eyes widened as she realized her slip. What if that information was enough for him to figure out where they were? No, there were thousands of planets where it was just after breakfast. She was just being paranoid.

 

“Fine, then,” he said. “Get back to me tomorrow. Whatever. Now, I need to go shower, so unless you’d like to join me--” Rey could feel his delighted satisfaction rise through the bond as he saw how red her face got “--kriff off and go back to doing whatever it is that Resistance fighters do in their spare time.” It was his turn to shut her out this time, and she jumped as if she had been physically pushed.

 

“What,” she gasped, “the _kriff_ just happened?”

 

* * *

 

Ben didn’t know what he had been thinking when he told Hux that he was bringing Rey as his date to the big First Order Anniversary Celebration. Mostly he had been trying to piss Hux off. He and Hux had never been friends, but Hux hated him even more now that he was Supreme Leader and therefore Hux’s new boss.

 

“But, Supreme Leader,” Hux had sniveled, “Isn’t she the enemy?”

 

“Are you questioning me?” Ben had said, holding a hand out threateningly to remind Hux how easily he could cut off his airflow.

 

“No, Supreme Leader,” Hux had said sulkily.

 

“Good,” Ben had said. “Dismissed, Hux.” _Get your stupid ginger face out of my sight_ were the unspoken words he had added after that.

 

It had taken Ben a few tries, but he finally broke through to Rey. He had been standing around shirtless and covered in oil all day for when he finally got through to her. And the effort of breaking through (and the cold he was going to get from standing around half-naked on a base--it was freezing in space) was worth it as he watched her reaction to seeing his naked chest again. As much as she tried to deny it, she was attracted to him. And whether or not she realized it, the feeling was definitely reciprocated.

 

Being so far apart from her was nearly killing him after they fought together on the Supremacy. He had never been good at taming his temper, but in the aftermath of her rejection and the destruction of the base on Crait, he had become even more volatile. But underneath the anger, underneath the temper, was hurt. He was hurt that she had rejected him and abandoned him, just like everyone else in his life. He had literally killed for her, and she still chose the dying Resistance over him.

 

There was another side to that. He hadn’t had time for it in years, not with the amount of training he did, and not with Snoke constantly poking around his mind. Going without something for long enough, his hormones had gotten the message and taken a step back, allowing him to put that energy towards something else. But ever since touching her fingers across parsecs, it had awoken something in him that he hadn’t realized he was missing: sexual frustration. It had taken every shred of self-control not to kiss her when she arrived on the Supremacy, especially with the way she was looking at him. But no, he couldn’t give Snoke and indication that he would chose her in a heartbeat, and anyway, the idea of taking advantage of her when she was in handcuffs made him sick.

 

But the sexual frustration kept him awake late at night when he had nothing to distract himself from thoughts of Rey. He’d tried ignoring it, hoping it would fade as the bond faded...but the bond hadn’t faded, and the feelings had only gotten worse. Taking matters into his own hand didn’t help, which only increased his frustration. He figured she had no idea since she had shut off the bond, which was good, because he didn’t need to give her the advantage of knowing how badly he wanted her. Better to let her go than dwell on something that could never be, right?

 

Which led him to this moment. _I need a favor_ , he’d started off. He had no experience in this sort of thing, but Rey hadn’t seemed pleased when he’d asked her to be his date. He wondered if there was something else he should have done. Flowers? People in holovids did that, didn’t they? Would it even be possible to give her something through the Force bond? ( _Must investigate that,_ he found himself thinking. _For science._ )

 

He figured that promising to hold off on chasing the Resistance down counted as a gift, though. The Resistance was so worn down that most of the First Order figured that it wasn’t worth the effort of chasing after them, anyway. Only Hux seemed critical of Ben’s plans for the First Order, but that was probably Hux being critical of everything Ben did.

 

The cherry on top of the whole encounter was getting the last word in, though. He had never tried to shut her out of a ForceTime session, and he was extremely satisfied to know that he was as capable of shutting her out as she was of shutting him out.

 

It didn’t even take Rey a whole day to get back to him. Hours later, he felt her pushing at the bond. He thought about taking a while to let her in because he was petty, but he was too desperate for an answer to his proposal to keep her out.

 

“Do you promise that you’ll leave the Resistance alone?” she asked as soon as she materialized in his room. (He had, to his chagrin, forgotten to take off his shirt before letting her in. A missed opportunity, that.)

 

“I can’t promise to leave them alone forever,” he said. “But I can promise to leave them alone for now. As soon as they attack us, however, all bets are off.”

 

Rey nodded. “I won’t tell you where they are,” she said.

 

“I didn’t expect you to.”

 

“And I won’t betray them for you.”

 

“You made it very clear where you stand when you rejected me on the Supremacy,” he said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his tone. He felt her echo his heartbroken feelings when he said that and felt at least a small amount of petty satisfaction knowing that she was as heartbroken as he was.

 

“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll be your date for your stupid party so that you can one-up your stupid General Hugs.”

 

“General Hux,” he corrected, unable to keep the smile off his face. He felt a twinge of annoyance from her come down the bond, but he ignored it.

 

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Tell me where to meet you. Somewhere neutral, where I won’t be ambushed by Stormtroopers or TIE fighters or whatever else you like to use to terrorize people.”

 

He gave her the coordinates of a neutral system not far from Coruscant, where the party was being held, and she agreed to meet him in two days. She closed the bond with one final eyeroll, and Ben couldn’t help doing a tiny happy dance that she had agreed to meet him. Maybe, once she was with him again, and once she saw what life was like as the Supreme Leader of the First Order, she would understand what great work he was doing, and she would finally join him by his side as his equal.

 

Alternatively, maybe they could just make out a bit before she abandoned him yet again for the Resistance.

 

* * *

 

 Rey sighed as she packed her bags with enough to carry her through a couple of days. She had no idea how long she would be with Ben, but she figured that a party couldn’t last longer than a day.

 

“Why did I agree to this, again?” she asked Finn as he helped her ready the Falcon.

 

“Because it’s a good way to gain intel about the First Order, especially now that their leadership is in flux due to Snoke’s demise.”

 

“This is still a terrible idea,” she grumbled.

 

“Maybe,” said Finn, “but if it gets them off our backs for a while, I think you need to do it. Besides,” he added with a smirk, “it seems like you have Kylo Ren wrapped around your finger, and we need to use that to our advantage.”

 

“I do _not_ have Kylo Ren wrapped around my finger,” Rey protested.

 

“Sure sounds like you do,” said Poe, entering the Falcon.

 

“Why are you guys on board with this plan?” she asked for the hundredth time.

 

“Because it gets them off our back, and it distracts their Supreme Leader, both of which we can use to bring them down,” said Poe, echoing what the rest of the leadership of the Resistance had said when Rey and Finn had brought this to her attention. Rey hadn’t been able to bear the tension of facing Leia alone, unable to figure out if the general wanted to know what her estranged son was up to or not.

 

Rey groaned. This mission was taking her away from her friends, from the first family she’d ever known. That was bad enough. But there was a deeper, darker reason she didn’t want to do it: she wasn’t sure she could bear being around Ben again. She was still heartbroken over his rejection of the Resistance, knowing that he had chosen power over what was right. Not to mention her attraction to him. It was easy to pretend that her attraction to him was some sort of weird need to find release as a coping mechanism for the general stress of her life while he was parsecs away, but how was it going to affect her to be up close and in person again? And how was she going to hide that from him, when he could sense her thoughts and feelings down the bond? Just thinking about it gave her an unwelcome jolt of pleasure down her core. (Or was that something coming down from the other end of the bond? It was getting harder and harder to tell.)

 

“Relax, Rey,” said Poe, pulling her into a hug. “It’s a simple mission. Get in, be a fake date for the Supreme Leader of the First Order, get out.”

 

“Well when you put it like that,” she said sarcastically. They all knew it was anything but simple.

 

Poe let her go, then Finn pulled her into an embrace. “Come back safely,” he said, giving her an extra squeeze before letting her go. He gave her a homing beacon so that she could find her way back to the Resistance if they had to move on, although if all went according to plan, they’d still be in the same place when she got back.

 

“I will,” she said, trying her hardest to give them a reassuring smile. “Now get out. I’m going to be late.”

 

The journey to the coordinates that Ben gave her was longer than she would have liked. She thought her nerves were going to explode with the tension and anticipation she felt about meeting up with Ben again. She found herself pacing around the Falcon as it was on autocontrol, trying her hardest to block Ben out as she felt him knocking at her mental walls on the bond. There were a million things she was feeling as she sped closer and closer to Ben, none of which she could quite name. (Well, except for sexual tension. But she refused to acknowledge _that_ , as much as she wanted some sort of relief before she had to spend a few excruciating days with her nemesis. Was what what Ben was to her? Her nemesis? It didn’t seem like the right word, but Rey didn’t know what else to call him.)

 

And suddenly she was there, arriving at the coordinates he gave her. She’d never heard of the planet, but that wasn’t surprising, given that she’d never bothered to learn what there was beyond Jakku until recently. From space, it looked like a swirling green and purple mass, and as she approached, she realized that there were little red lakes dotting the green masses, and the purple was some sort of sea. She landed in a small trading town, suddenly feeling self-conscious. She let the bond open, figuring that it was safe to let Ben in now that she had landed.

 

_I’ve already spotted you,_ she heard him say. _The Falcon? Really?_ She could feel how annoyed he was that she’d chosen this particular ship as the one to bring her, and she couldn’t keep a little satisfied smirk from her face.

 

Her heart jumped as she walked out of the Falcon and saw him lounging against another ship nearby. He was still wearing his customary black, but he had forgone the usual uniform he wore in place of something more lightweight. It made him seem more...human, and less ‘evil Force-wielding monster.’

 

“Rey,” he said with a smile. She hated the way it made her heart jump.

 

“Ben,” she said, trying to keep a neutral expression. “What are we doing here?”

 

“You can’t go to a party dressed like that,” he said, nodding at her outfit.

 

She looked down at herself. She didn’t have a lot of options. There wasn’t much need for anything beyond the basics on Jakku, and she didn’t exactly have a lot of time to shop these days.

 

“Who says I can’t?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

“I do,” he said. “And it’s _my_ party, and you’re _my_ date.”

 

“Yeah? Well it’s _my_ body, and I can wear whatever I want.” She felt his annoyance down the bond and resisted the urge to smirk at him.

 

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time here.”

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t expecting how happy he was to see her. He had been sensing her tension and anticipating down the bond, no matter how hard she had been trying to shut him out. He had tried to push through the bond so that he could soothe her tension, but she kept him firmly out and refused to talk to him.

 

He also wasn’t expecting to be so happy about the idea of taking her shopping. She had looked good in everything he’d seen her in--beautiful, actually--but if he could find her something that would show off a little more skin…

 

He shook his head. No, that was a terrible idea. He was already struggling to keep from touching her as it was. He didn’t need to add anything for the temptation.

 

“Actually, there’s no need for shopping,” she said lightly. “I packed my own dress.”

 

“Where did you manage to find a party dress? Was there some sort of ancient Jedi wardrobe on Ahch-To?”

 

She scowled. _Force, she even looks beautiful when she scowls_ , he found himself thinking. He tried to clamp down on that thought, praying that she wasn’t paying attention to his thoughts.

 

“No, you idiot,” she said, sweeping down the ramp on the Falcon to stand in front of him.

 

“I can’t imagine the Resistance base on Crait had dresses hanging around,” he said, trying to think of the other places she had been since leaving Jakku. The horrible thought that maybe his mother had lent her something occurred to him.

 

“I didn’t get it from General Organa,” she said, sensing his sudden panic. “Relax. Don’t mind where I got it.”

 

“Whatever,” he said, trying to clamp down on his feelings. “If you already have something, we don’t need to hang around here.” He turned to leave, expecting her to follow.

 

“Leave?” she asked. “Leave where? What am I supposed to do with the Falcon?”

 

He could feel her reluctance to leave it, so he turned around and said, “Relax. It’s safe here.”

 

“Forgive me if I don’t trust you,” she said, “but I am not leaving my ship on some random planet.”

 

He bristled at the words ‘my ship.’ As much as he had hated his father, it was his father’s ship. Not hers.

 

“We can’t take that ship,” he said. “It’s too recognizable. Also, it has a ‘shoot on sight’ order on it across all First Order ships.”

 

“You can get the First Order to back off from the Resistance, but you can’t keep them from shooting my ship?”

 

“We hate that ship,” he said simply. “But,” he added, trying not to roll his eyes, “if it makes you feel better, we can leave it parked on an abandoned mining planet not far from here. No one will take it there.”

 

She sighed. He sensed her reluctance, but then she surprised him by agreeing. “Fine,” she said. “Lead the way.”

 

It didn’t take long for her to follow him to the hide-out spot for the Falcon, and within a couple of hours, she was on his ship, sitting in the copilot seat with an annoyed expression on her face.

 

“How long is this party going to last, anyway?” she said.

 

“Rushing to get back, are you?”

 

“Well, yeah, obviously,” she said.

 

He felt a little hurt by those words. “Don’t you want to see me?” he asked.

 

She sighed. He could sense a wide range of emotions coursing through her, but she slammed the bond shut as soon as she realized he was looking. “I don’t want to attend a First Order party,” she said, evading the question.

 

“So you do want to see me.”

 

“I didn’t say that, either.”

 

“I knew it,” he said. “You missed me.”

 

She turned to glare at him, and he couldn’t help but notice how close she was to him in the small cockpit of the ship. Her hand was _right there_. All he had to do was reach out and touch--

 

“Listen, Ben,” she said. “Let’s get something straight. No matter what we feel for each other, it is never going to happen unless you abandon the First Order.”

 

“Who says that you’re not going to abandon the Resistance?” he shot back. He hated that she was opening up this wound again. Wait, hold on--”What do you feel for me?” he asked, his heart suddenly pounding.

 

“I--” she said, shrinking back in her seat suddenly. “Nothing. Nothing!”

 

_How do you politely but firmly explain to someone that she is your girlfriend?_ He found himself thinking.

 

“I am not your girlfriend!” Rey shouted before he realized that he’d accidentally sent that thought down the bond.

 

“You’re my date!” he shouted back. “We held hands in my mind!”

 

Rey groaned. “You’re impossible,” she said.

 

“Don’t bother denying it. You know we have something special.”

 

They spent the rest of the ride to Coruscant in silence, both of them seething and trying to avoid bringing up the topic again. It was only a matter of time before she admitted what she felt for him, Ben knew.

 

_At least you bothered to get me my own room,_ Ray said sulkily down the bond as he checked them into the hotel.

 

“I have the entire floor,” he said, leading them to the elevator. “But it’s just you and me up there, if you’re wondering.” _You are always welcome to stay in_ my _room,_ he shot back silently.

 

“In your dreams,” she said, although she sounded a bit flustered as she said it. He took this as a good sign.

 

“How would you know what’s in my dreams?” he asked, leaning in to whisper in her ear. He smirked as she shivered. “Are you spying on me, Rey?”

 

“I’ve spent the majority of the last month trying to kick you out,” she hissed, turning to face him. “But no, you keep trying to send me things down the bond. Why can’t you let this go, Ben?”

 

He didn’t know how to respond to that. His brain was racing, trying to keep from grabbing her and kissing her. He didn’t think that now was the time or the place, but his heart was pounding as he noticed her eyes dip down to his lips before snapping up again.

 

“I just can’t,” he breathed. The elevator dinged, and they walked out onto the empty floor. “Here’s your room,” he said, indicating a door. “I’m down the hall, there.” He pointed to the door at the end of the hall. “Call a droid to order food whenever you’re hungry. The party is in a few hours. Be ready to leave by then.” He turned and walked away down to his room without waiting for a response. He needed a moment alone.

 

* * *

 

Rey sighed as she flopped down on the bed. It was the biggest and most comfortable bed she’d ever seen, so naturally, she hated it. She hated this hotel, she hated this planet, she hated this party, and most of all, she hated the reason she was there in the first place. She didn’t bother to hide that from the bond.

 

_Hate me all you want,_ came the response. _But you can’t deny that you’re attracted to me._

 

She screamed in response, and she felt him laugh down the bond. She shut it down as tightly as she’d ever shut it, but she was having a harder and harder time shutting it off completely. Maybe it was the physical proximity to him. Maybe it was being reminded of why she’d left Ahch-To to see him in the first place.

 

_Or maybe it’s being reminded of how attracted to him you are,_ some part of her brain (that was definitely _not_ Ben) said to her.

 

She’d nearly lost it in the elevator and kissed him, but the thought of everything he’d done and what he’d chosen over her had come rushing back at her. Just in time to keep her from doing something stupid.

 

Knowing that he was just in the next room over was driving her crazy. What was it about him? Was it just the bond? Or was it something else? She had never been this attracted to anyone in her life, and she hated that she wanted him so badly. She knew he felt the same way. Aside from the, uh, _sensations_ she occasionally got from him running down the bond, why else would he have dragged her here in exchange for leaving her friends alone for a while?

 

There was a growing heat in her. She couldn’t tell if it was from him, or if it was from her just knowing how close he was to her. And as much as she wanted to do something about it, she couldn’t be sure that she could keep shutting him out, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how crazy he was driving her.

 

However...she _did_ have a few hours before she had to be anywhere, and she _didn’t_ have anything else to do.

 

_No._ She grabbed the staff out of the bag she’d brought with her. Ben hadn’t seemed opposed to her bringing a weapon. (Although that was probably because he thought she was no match right now, after Anakin's lightsaber had broken.) The room was big enough to run through some forms in, and she had to do _something_ to get her mind out of the gutter.

 

As soon as she began to train, her mind started to clear. It was always like this when she trained these days. Focusing on the physical movements helped her mind to calm down enough that she could start reaching out in the Force. However, due to the individual sitting on the other side of the wall, she could only maintain this for about five minutes before he was knocking at her door. There was a loud thump as the furniture sank down to the floor. Rey hadn’t even realized she was lifting it while she was training.

 

“I know what you’re doing in there,” Ben’s voice called through the door.

 

“Kriff off, Ben,” she shouted back.

 

“Let me train with you. I can teach you things.”

 

She paused. Actually, it would be nice to have a sparring partner for once. Most of the people left in the Resistance were pilots and commanders, most of whom didn’t have a lot of hand-to-hand combat training. And none of them wanted to train with her. They were afraid of her abilities.

 

“Rey, open the door.”

 

She sighed. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this,” she muttered as she walked over to open the door. She sputtered as she opened the door to a shirtless Ben, _again_. “What is it with you and not wearing shirts?” she hissed, feeling her face heat up.

 

“Why does it bother you so much?” Ben asked.

 

“Because,” Rey said, unable to find a good reason. “It just does!”

 

Ben smirked, knowing he’d won that round. “So, how about some training?” he said, stepping past her into the room.

 

“If it involves beating you with a stick, I’m all for it.”

 

He laughed. It was a surprisingly amused laugh. Not what she expected from him. She hated what the sound of it did to the nerves in her stomach almost as much as she hated what the sight of him shirtless and _right in front of her_ did.

 

“I’d like to see you try,” he said.

 

“We’ve fought before,” she said. “I can best you.”

 

“Yes,” he said, reaching out to take her staff from her hands. “With a lightsaber or a staff, yes. But with your bare hands?”

 

She gulped. She couldn’t back down from such a challenge. On the other hand, there was no way this was going to end well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been years since I wrote any fanfiction, but (at the risk of oversharing) I’m deep in the throes of a depressive episode and one of the few things that is bringing me any joy right now is the [Emo Kylo Ren twitter feed](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n). See if you can play “spot the tweet.” Thank you for reading, and please feel free let me know what you think!
> 
> Edit: to give (more) credit where it's due, here are the @KyloR3n tweets I've referenced here:  
> [spot](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/943143866185797632) [the](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/944020615941500928) [tweet.](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/942874566162083842)


	2. Is this how you prepare for a date?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no reason to believe that Rey isn’t bisexual, is there? Or that Kylo Ren doesn’t get off on seeing Hux groveling below him?

It took all of Ben’s self-control not to stomp back to the hotel room and destroy every shred of furniture in it. Rey’s words had hurt more than he expected them to. Sure, he knew she was trying to avoid him, but he’d thought that maybe, once she had cooled off a bit from what happened on Crait, they could resume...whatever their relationship was.

 

He took it as a sign of maturity on his part that he only destroyed the mirror, although that was more due to his inability to Force-lift a space pear onto a fork with a smile. (Even though his grandfather had never appeared as a Force ghost, he had dreams about his grandfather’s memories that he tried to recreate in his life. At least, he assumed they were memories. They were usually dreams about a Jedi temple in its heyday, poorly written romantic dialogue, some bizarre creature with the most annoying accent he’d ever heard, and losing all his limbs in an epic showdown with his mentor.)

 

Knowing that he had Rey _right there_ and yet he didn’t have her at all was driving him crazy. It was cruel of the Force to give him his equal and have her be so damn stubborn about being on the losing side of the galactic war.

 

He sighed. This train of thought wasn’t going anywhere, and he didn’t want to risk her overhearing it. It was like the physical proximity was making the bond harder to control. He could feel her radiating hate down the bond, so he shot back a snarky comment. She would come around eventually, he knew. But for now, he needed to clear his head, so he sat down to meditate.

 

Meditation was something he hadn’t done a lot before Snoke died. Snoke didn’t see the point of it, and meditating actually allowed Snoke to dig deeper into Ben’s mind, which was the opposite of what Ben wanted. But given Hux’s snide comments about his temper since assuming the role of Supreme Leader, Ben had figured that it was time to get back into it. His temper could be a tool to help him keep control of the First Order, but it would be counterproductive if he killed off all of senior management in a fit of rage.

 

It was almost like Snoke’s influence had been replaced with Rey’s. Meditation opened his mind up to what was going on in the Force, and at the forefront of it was the bond with Rey. As hard as he tried to focus on anything but Rey, he could feel her frustration welling up in him - and there was a heat growing in him in response.

 

He didn’t know where her feelings ended and his began anymore. And it was taking all of his self-control not to beat down those walls and see just how deep her sexual frustration went, because he didn’t think it was possible that it went deeper than his. But she seemed so intent on keeping him out, and he hated the idea of barging in when she didn’t want him to, so he settled for praying that she would give in to temptation and let him watch through the bond. The thought of that was powerful enough to make him hard, and he debated giving up on the hope that he could watch her give in to temptation in favor of trying to get it out of his system now before he had to face her again.

 

But then he felt her shut it out, and he flopped down on the bed with a groan. He wondered what she would do instead. He doubted she would call her friends in the Resistance; there was too much risk to reach out to them while she was so deep in enemy territory. And no matter how enraged (and unhinged) he had been on Crait, he meant what he said when he promised he’d leave them alone, and that included not trying to figure out where they were hiding.

 

So he tried to think of the least sexual things he could possibly think of. Finding that metal bikini in his mom’s closet when he was 13. C3PO giving him “the porgs and the bees” talk. Hux bowing and groveling before him. (Wait a minute, that one was actually kind of hot…but realizing how hot he found it did the trick; he was so disturbed by that that it suppressed the urge completely.)

 

Something in the room caught his attention. Was the furniture moving? He certainly wasn’t the one lifting it. That could only mean…

 

He reached out and realized that Rey was training. _There we go,_ his brain said. _Here’s your opportunity to get close to her._ Without giving it a second thought, he ripped off his shirt and left his room to knock on her door. He always trained without a shirt on. So what if it bothered Rey? (He left his pants on, though. Someday, he would have the body confidence of Jabba the Hutt. But for now, he still needed pants.)

 

The look that Rey gave him when he suggested fighting hand-to-hand was worth the whole encounter. Not that he had any idea what to do to get from Point A to Point Makeout, but he knew he’d figure something out.

 

“Fine,” she said, stepping back. “Hand-to-hand combat it is.”

 

“Have you had any training in this?” Ben asked, putting the staff down on the floor.

 

“Some,” Rey admitted. “A few bar fights on Jakku, mostly.”

 

“They have bars on Jakku?”

 

She grimaced. “Well, places where people go to get drunk in an attempt to distract themselves from the misery of having to eke out a living on Jakku, anyway.”

 

He blinked. He’d never thought of her as someone who would hang out in sketchy bars on Jakku. She seemed too...pure for that.

 

“I am not too pure,” she said, sensing his train of thought. “Just not darkside material.”

 

Ben scowled at her. Did she have to keep throwing that in his face?

 

“Yes, I do,” she answered, scowling back at him. But he could hear down their bond as clearly as she could. _If I keep reminding myself of that, I won’t…_ She pushed him, mentally and physically, as she realized what he was doing.

 

“It’s not _my_ fault you keep projecting your thoughts down the bond,” he said, stepping back.

 

“Stop reading my mind!” she said, throwing a punch at his face. He blocked it before throwing back his own. He held back for about five seconds before he realized that this was yet another thing where they were evenly matched.

 

“For a sand rat from Jakku, you certainly know how to throw a good punch,” he groaned as she caught him on the chest.

 

“I. Am not. A sand rat!” she yelled as she lunged at him. She was getting sloppy as she let herself get angry at him, and he had to suppress a grin. He loved getting her all worked up like this. Whether it was fighting with or against her, there was an undeniable sort of release that they both got from it. It was almost sexual. He felt like every cell in his body was crackling with electricity, but in a good way, not in an ‘evil Sith electrical Force shock’ kind of way. And through the bond, he knew that she was feeling it too.

 

Their fighting felt like a dance. Even though he had to hold back a tiny bit (after all, he’d spent the years she scavenged on Jakku training for this sort of thing), she was nearly able to keep up with him. The Force bond actually made it difficult to fight, because they could sense each other’s next moves before they happened. It was almost as mental as it was physical.

 

So he stopped holding back, and that’s when he finally caught her. He grabbed her wrists as she threw a punch at him and spun her around until she was caught between his arms, her back pressed up against him. Their hearts were both racing, but she stopped fighting for a minute. “Gotcha,” he whispered into her ear. She shuddered against him, but she didn’t try to fight her way out of his arms. He could sense her thoughts racing as fast as her heart, but he couldn’t focus on her thoughts while she was this close to him and not fighting to get away. She was so small compared to him, but he knew that appearances were deceiving when it came to her. She backed up into him, and his arms tightened around her. Was she really letting him do this, get this close to her? She was so close. Would it be weird if he leaned down and kissed her neck? It was _right there_ and she was so tempting and--

 

“Oof,” he gasped as she took advantage of his indecision to crouch down and flip him over her shoulder (using the Force to help her, no doubt). Before he knew it, she was up in his face, straddling him, pinning his arms down. If he thought his heart had been pounding half a second ago, it was nothing compared to what it was doing now.

 

“No,” she whispered into his ear. The feeling of her breath on his ear made him shiver, and he struggled to keep from getting too aroused. “I’ve got you.” And then she kissed him.

 

* * *

 

 Rey had only kissed two other people in her life. The first was a boy she kissed three years ago on Jakku. He’d cornered her in the bar and kissed her. She’d kissed him back, mostly out of curiosity, but it was altogether an unpleasant experience. He tasted like cheap Jakku beer, and he stuck his tongue in her mouth and sort of flopped it around aimlessly. She’d shoved him away after three seconds of it, and she’d punched him the next time he tried to do it again.

 

The second was also on Jakku, but it wasn’t at a seedy bar. It was a woman who had come on a trade ship. She wasn’t planning on sticking around, but she said that she’d felt a spark as soon as she looked at Rey. It was a thousand times better than the boy at the bar. Clearly, the woman had known what she was doing, and she had had Rey moaning as she moved from Rey’s lips down her neck and then back up to nibble on her ear. They hadn’t gone any further than that, unfortunately - the woman’s husband had walked into the back storage closet where they were hiding, and rather than get involved in a threesome, Rey had nearly sprinted out of there and nervously hidden in her AT-AT until they left again.

 

Kissing Ben wasn’t like either of those two experiences. For starters, she hadn’t had the undeniable chemistry she had with Ben with either of those two. If she was being honest with herself, she had known she was a goner as soon as they touched hands across parsecs in that little hut on Ahch-To. Even their fighting made her feel like every nerve in her body was on fire. It was like a form of foreplay for them. Being encased in his arms had felt _so good_ , but she couldn’t let him get one up on her. It was a matter of pride, but she also liked knowing that she had someone so powerful under her control.

 

After a moment, she let his arms go so that she could grab his hair. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him. She nearly moaned as she felt his nails dig into her back.

 

There was another sensation to this. The bond was creating a feedback loop between them. If she couldn’t tell how good it felt for him based on how hard he was gripping her and how enthusiastically he was kissing her, she could feel it down the bond. She knew he was having the same reaction, and even though a part of her didn’t want to let him know how strong of a hold he had on her, she couldn’t hide it from him. Not anymore.

 

Apparently he’d had enough of her being in control, however, because he shifted them so that he was on top of her, pinning her hands down this time. She didn’t like that. She wanted to be able to touch him and finally run her fingers all over his naked chest like she’d wanted to all those times he’d appeared shirtless over their ForceTime sessions. He sensed that and let her go after a second, and she immediately reached up to thread one hand through his hair ( _It’s even softer than it looks,_ she found herself thinking) and one around his body to pull him closer to her. With the way their hips were aligned, she could feel the evidence of what her kisses were doing to him, and as he ground against her, she felt like they were both wearing too much clothing.

 

“Rey,” he moaned as he kissed her neck. The sound of his voice, completely helpless against everything he felt for her, caused her to melt. She felt her core turn molten, and if she thought she’d been sexually frustrated before, it was nothing compared to what she felt now.

 

But then something slipped. She had a brief moment of recalling the way that woman on Jakku had nipped at her neck, and then--

 

“What do you mean, I’m not as good as her?” Ben said, shoving himself off of her suddenly.

 

Rey blinked, her brain unable to keep up with the sudden change of events. “What are you talking about?” she said. “Can’t you tell how much I want this?”

 

“I heard you!” Ben said, sounding hurt. “You don’t think I’m as good at this as her.”

 

She felt it then. She was still on fire, her heart pounding, her body screaming for release. But he was--

 

_He’s never done this before._ It shocked her. She’d assumed that he’d always had men, women, and aliens throwing themselves at him. He radiated power, and his chest and arms were solid muscle. ( _Although_ , she thought, _he always wears that helmet and those huge black robes…)_

 

“That’s not what I--” she started to say, but he’d already stood up to leave. “Ben!” she shouted, pulling herself up to chase after him. But he’d already left the room and slammed the door in a fit of hurt rage.

 

Rey wanted to scream. “That is not what I meant!” she shouted through the door. “Get back here and _listen_ to me, Force-damnit!”

 

It was true that he lacked the technical skills of that woman. (That kiss alone had been enough to get her through some lonely nights on Jakku.) But that woman had nowhere near as much chemistry and passion as what she had with Ben, and that made all the difference. Besides, he could learn. She liked the idea of teaching him what she liked. Ben’s problem was that he was insecure and jealous, which was a dangerous combination made even more dangerous by his temper.

 

Great. Not only did was she on the receiving end of a barrage of hurt, angry feelings, but she was still wound up and in need of serious release. She had hoped--needed--him to help her out there (lend a hand, maybe, or a tongue), but clearly he was too sulky for that. Fine. She would take care of things on her own.

 

She still felt like she was wearing too many clothes. Ben’s anger had dimmed her lust a little bit, but it wasn’t enough to completely kill her mood. It was like there had been weeks of build up and just when she thought she was finally going to get what she really needed to make it go away, she was left hanging and nearly ready to combust. (Which might actually be possible. Who knew what she could do with the Force? She doubted that the Jedi texts had any input on this, given their general pro-celibacy thing.) He wanted to go off and sulk because his ego couldn’t handle some constructive criticism? Fine. He could be on the receiving end of her thoughts on what could have happened between them if he hadn’t been so Force-damned _jealous._

 

She pulled off her shirt slowly, making sure that her thoughts and actions were loud and clear down the bond. It was agonizing to go so slowly after the rush of passion that they had had together, but she was going to take her time with this. And she was going to make him savor it all the way with her.

 

Unwrapping the arm wraps. Untying her boots. Slowly peeling off her shirt until she was left in a thin undershirt. Taking that off so that her breasts were exposed, her nipples peaked against the sudden rush of cool air. She paused for a moment to try to peer down the bond to see what was happening at the other end of it.

 

He was still sulking, she could feel that. He was angry and hurt. But she could tell that he was still wound up, even though he was trying to ignore her. But he couldn’t make himself look away. She smirked as she reached down to touch her breasts. She sighed as her fingertips pinched her nipples, and she felt Ben’s hurt at misinterpreting her thoughts recede as the familiar sexual frustration started to return.

 

_This could have been you, you know,_ she shot down the bond as she licked her thumb before moving it back to rub circles around the oversensitive nipple. She felt something like a soft moan at the other end, and something changed as he realized that she was thinking of him while she did it.

 

_I thought you preferred the more_ experienced _woman you met on Jakku,_ he shot back.

 

_No, you idiot,_ she thought as she started to trail her fingers down along the planes of her stomach. _If you had actually followed that train of thought to its conclusion, you would have figured it out._

 

_Figured what out?_

 

_No one_ , she shot back as she slid her pants down and off her legs, _has ever turned me on as much as you._ With that, she slid her fingers between her legs and moaned. She couldn’t remember ever having been so turned on and so wet. She could feel Ben at the other end of the bond turning to go back to her room, but she said _No. You had your chance. This is all you get._

 

_For now,_ he shot back. But he obeyed and didn’t come barging in to her room. She heard him say something about needing to catch up before she felt a similar sensation on the other end of the bond.

 

She’d had plenty of experience getting herself off. After all, there had been a lot of cold, lonely nights on Jakku. She’d never had a low sex drive, and since the Force had awakened in her, it had only increased. Having the Force bond with Ben had only made it worse, as she had another person’s sexual frustration piled on top of hers, _and_ she knew that she was the source of his sexual frustration (as much as she had been afraid to admit it) to boot.

 

But this...this was something else. It was still her fingers, yes, but it was so much more. There had been so much build-up that it was nearly enough to make her explode. She had been trying so hard to hold back from thinking about Ben for the past few weeks, especially since she’d barely had a moment alone, but now the images were flying at her. At him, as well. She knew that he could see and hear everything that she was thinking.

 

_Really, Rey? In the throne room?_

 

_Like you weren’t thinking the same thing._

 

Because as he was getting all of her thoughts and fantasies about him, she was getting all of his. Somewhere in some part of her brain that hadn’t wanted to think about it, she knew that he had been thinking about her when he got off, but it was something completely different to know exactly what he was thinking. (She never came when he did, but she did get a jolt of something, like an echo of an orgasm. It usually came at an inopportune time.)

 

_Like you haven’t had the same effect on me,_ he shot back. _Do you have any idea how inconvenient it is to know that you’re getting off while I’m stuck in the middle of some boring meeting?_

 

_Shut up, Ben_ , she shot back as she reached down and put two fingers inside of herself. Usually she couldn’t get herself off this way, but she knew that it would drive him crazy to know that she was doing that to herself, and that made it worth the effort.

 

She heard him curse down the bond. _I am going to do that to you next time,_ he moaned.

 

_Yeah, you are._ She could feel the orgasm building in both of them, and she knew that it wasn’t going to be long now.

 

It was all a jumble of emotions and images now. They were both too far gone for words. _So close._ And then--

 

Rey nearly screamed as she came, her whole body shaking and all of her muscles twitching. She could feel Ben doing the same at the other end of the bond. The feedback loop that the bond gave them prolonged her orgasm longer than she knew was possible...and she knew that when they did that to each other in person, it would be even stronger.

 

It took a while for them to calm down, both of their hearts racing as they thought about what had just happened between them.

 

_Why didn’t we try that from the beginning?_ he asked, sounding winded, even telepathically.

 

_Because you’re an asshole. You told me I was nobody_. The reminder that they were on opposite sides of a war was the emotional equivalent of throwing them into an ocean of cold water.

 

_I didn’t...I didn’t mean it like that._

 

She didn’t respond. It didn’t matter how he meant it. The words still cut her deeply no matter what, and nothing would change that.

 

She pushed herself up off the bed. She needed a shower. _Don’t we have a party to get to?_ she asked as coldly as she could, trying to keep the sadness and the hurt from leaking into the bond.

 

It was no use. It was still too widely opened between them. She wondered if this meant that they’d ever be able to close each other out again.

 

_We do,_ came the response in a similarly cold tone. _Be ready in an hour._ With that, they resumed ignoring each other, trying to pretend that there weren’t any confused, sexy, angsty feelings between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raise your hand if you would have ForceTime sex. (No? Only me? Okay.)
> 
> I was going to hold off on it, but...it was too much fun to write.
> 
> [Spot](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/944786714207375365) [the tweet](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/943203833399869440)


	3. Is this how you act on a date?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might be taking a few liberties with human pheromones and what I read about Nautolans on Wookieepedia, so I apologize if I got something wrong.

An hour later, Ben was knocking on her door, telling her they had to leave. He could tell that Rey was really dreading this, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little awkward about what they had just done over the Force bond. She brought something out in him, and even though he was possessive and petty enough to hate the fact that she had kissed someone else and thought for a second that it might be better, he loved knowing that he had the same effect on her.

 

“Give me a minute,” he heard her grumble through the door. _Oh yeah, she definitely hates this._ He sighed and rolled his eyes. But when she opened the door and emerged from the room a moment later, his thoughts stopped completely.

 

“Where did you get that dress?” he breathed. Ben didn’t care much about clothing and fashion--fashion didn’t matter when all you liked wearing were heavy black robes in the style of your idol--but he knew a good dress when he saw one. She was still wearing her customary arm wraps, but these ones were black, like the dress. And the dress...It was sleeveless and cut in a low v-neck. There were triangular cutouts on the waist, showing triangles of tan skin, and it ended just above her knees. It was skintight and when she turned around to close the door, he noticed that the back was held together by a series of ribbons criss-crossing her back. The tight cut of it didn’t leave much to his imagination.

 

She was also wearing black boots that came up to just below her knees. He thought he saw the outline of a weapon in one of them, but he didn’t say anything. If she needed to defend herself, he was happy to let her carry a weapon. As long as she didn’t use it on him, obviously.

 

“Does it matter?” Rey asked, attempting to breeze by him as if she didn’t care. He could tell that she was satisfied with his reaction, and he scowled at her back. Force, he was going to have a hard time keeping his hands off of her. And didn’t she know it. “Let’s just get this stupid party over with,” she said, pressing the button to call the elevator.

 

They didn’t talk in the elevator down to the lobby. They actually spent the entire ride trying to look anywhere but at each other and failing miserably. The ride to the center where the party was being held felt similar, and Ben felt himself growing irritated at the awkward silence between them. Just as he was about to say something stupid just to break the silence, Rey asked, “How long do we have to be there, anyway?”

 

“Long enough to make an appearance,” he said, intentionally being vague. He wanted to stay there as long as possible so that he could lord it over Hux that he got the best date in the galaxy, but Rey didn’t need to know that. Again: he was petty.

 

However, if they did have to leave early...maybe they could finish what they’d started upstairs. Together. Not separated by a wall. He snuck a glance at Rey to see if she’d picked up on that thought, but she didn’t react at all.

 

“What does ‘making an appearance’ entail?”

 

“You know,” he said, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Get in, talk to some people, have a few drinks, dance a bit, prove to Hux that I have a better date than he does, get out.”

 

“Why does it matter so much to you what Hugs thinks?”

 

“First of all, it’s Hux,” he corrected, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. He got the sense that that’s what Hux’s nickname was with the Resistance. He’d heard all about that Resistance pilot--Boe or Pie or whatever--taunting Hux with that name just before destroying that dreadnought. “And second of all, I just do.”

 

“Why? You’re Supreme Leader now. Shouldn’t that be enough?” He could feel her probing at the bond, trying to see what was really going on.

 

“It isn’t,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate. He tried to send a _conversation over_ message down the bond to hope that Rey would get the hint and drop it. He didn’t want to have to admit to her just how petty he was, even though she probably already know. “Oh, and Rey?” he said as the transport arrived at the the center.

 

“What?”

 

“Please call me Kylo Ren while we’re in there.”

 

* * *

 

For the millionth time, Rey found herself wondering what the kriff she had done to end up in this position. Her life had made more mad leaps in the past two months than she ever even knew was possible. Each leap seemed more improbable than the last, but this one blew all of the others out of the water.

 

“Stop acting like you’re a little sand rat from Jakku,” Ben hissed in her ear as they entered the center. “You’re the date of the most powerful man in the galaxy because you’re the most powerful woman in the galaxy. Act like it.”

 

“I am not--” she started to sputter, but he grabbed her arm to hold it on his as he escorted her into the building.

 

_Yes, you are_ he shot back down the bond. _You’re my equal. Only you, Rey._ She hated what those words did to the nerves buzzing around in her stomach. Despite their ForceTime sex session earlier, she still didn’t feel completely sated. She knew that Ben wasn’t, either, and she guessed that he was in as much of a rush as she was to get back to the hotel and actually get their their shared sexual frustration out of their systems for good. Just one time, then never again. That was all they needed. One time.

 

_You’re lying to yourself if you think that’s true,_ Ben said.

 

_Stay out of my head,_ she shot back, embarrassed.

 

_Stop shouting down the bond._

 

“Supreme Leader,” various people said as they bowed when Rey and Ben entered the room. It was eerie the amount of power he held over these people. Rey hated the sight of it. She hated all of the reminders that he was her enemy when she was trying to reconcile how much she wanted him. For real, and not over their weird Force bond.

 

She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not when they ignored her as they greeted Ben--no, Kylo Ren. Right now, he was Kylo Ren.

 

And she was nobody. Just a scavenger from Jakku who got lucky with the Force.

 

Something about that train of thought must have eked down the bond, because she felt Ben-- _no, Kylo_ \--give her arm a small squeeze, as if he was trying to reassure her of something. She knew he was going to say something, but she blocked him out. _Don’t._ Thankfully, he complied.

 

As they stepped closer and closer to the main room, Rey hated the place more and more. How dare they spend so much money so lavishly when people across the galaxy were starving? How dare they smile and laugh when people were dying? Had Kylo Ren brought her here just to throw her miserable existence in her face? She was shocked to realize how quickly he had gone from Ben to Kylo Ren in her mind. It was like he had two different sides: he was Ben when they were alone, speaking across the Force bond, and he was Kylo Ren when they were surrounded by the most important people in the galaxy.

 

_Rey_ , he said across the bond. _Please. Pretend you aren’t completely miserable._

 

She plastered on a fake smile, but said, _I hate you and I hate this party and I hate this planet and I hate the stupid First Order._

 

_It’s okay to hate it. Sometimes I hate it, too._

 

She blinked, her fake smile slipping for a second as she thought about those words. But that was a conversation for another time, when they weren’t surrounded by people who were bowing and greeting Kylo Ren with the respect due to their Supreme Leader. And Rey had no idea where she fit in to it all.

 

There was a lot more groveling than she expected there to be, although she should have set her expectations lower. Kylo Ren (and, to some degree, Ben) needed the adoration of as many people as possible to survive. It definitely sustained the Kylo Ren side of him. But there was no one’s approval he needed more than Hux.

 

“Supreme Leader.” Hux greeted them with a bow, but it was full of contempt. It only took him an hour to make his way over to them with his date on his arm. Rey had to admit that his date was pretty. Well, she assumed his date was pretty. He had brought a Nautolan with him. Rey had only seen a Nautolan once--they didn’t generally visit Jakku, given their aquatic natures. So yes, Hux’s date was as pretty as a green-skinned, black-eyed amphibian with hair tentacles could be.

 

“Commander Hux.” Even without the Force bond, Rey could hear the disdain dripping from Kylo’s tone. She had to bite her tongue in order not to laugh. Could they be any more petty?

 

“Have you met Youm Xizang?” Hux said, indicating the Nautolan on his arm. “You know, the famous holovid star.”

 

Rey was surprised. She had always thought that the First Order was too xenophobic to even talk to aliens, let alone bring one to be a date to the most First Order-y of First Order parties.

 

“I don’t think I have,” said Kylo lightly, shaking her hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Youm Xizang.”

 

“Supreme Leader,” she said, bowing deeply.

 

“And who’s your date, R--Supreme Leader?” sniveled Hux. The fact that he almost forgot to use the ‘Supreme Leader’ title didn’t escape Rey’s noticed. She wondered if he’d done that on purpose, just to get a rise out of Ben-- _no, Kylo_.

 

“The most powerful woman in the galaxy,” Ben said simply. Rey could sense how badly he wanted to show up Hux. She remembered that Ben had said that he told Hux that she killed Snoke. Well, this was probably the best way to rub it in his face that she was the reason for Ben’s promotion, even if it wasn’t true.

 

She didn’t understand why Ben didn’t just openly say he killed Snoke. She’d have thought it would make him a more legitimate leader if he’d actually fought his way to the top.

 

Rey decided to ignore their little spat. “I’m Rey,” she said to Youm Xizang, holding out a hand for her to shake. At least _they_ could be civil, even if their dates were having a stupid dick-waving contest.

 

“The most powerful woman in the galaxy, huh?” said Youm Xizang, looking her up and down. “You seem kind of nervous for the most powerful woman in the galaxy.”

 

Rey narrowed her eyes. How could this Nautolan know that? Rey couldn’t detect that she was Force-sensitive.

 

“It’s the pheromones, darling,” Youm Xizang said, winking. “Pheromones don’t lie. We Nautolans can sense them just as well as we can see what’s in front of us. Besides, you’re wearing your feelings on your face.”

 

Rey let a panicked thought reach out for Ben, but he and Hux were still doing their stupid dick-waving contest thing. Good. Neither of them had heard that.

 

“Don’t worry,” the Nautolan said as she leaned in to whisper to Rey. “He’s not going to abandon you. Not anytime soon. I know you worry about that.”

 

Rey’s eyes widened and she gasped. “You don’t--you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

 

“Don’t I?” She held Rey’s gaze until Rey had to look away. “I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped,” she said gently. “But you seemed so worried, and I just wanted to let you know that everything is going to be okay.”

 

“It’s complicated,” Rey replied awkwardly, not sure what else to say.

 

“Isn’t it always?” Youm Xizang said with another wink. The men finally stopped their dick-waving and remembered that they had brought dates, and Youm Xizang waved at Rey as Hux led her away.

 

“What was all that about?” asked Ben as he reached for Rey’s hand.

 

“Nothing,” she said a little too quickly. He gave her a look. She knew that he could tell that something had rattled her, but he’d decided that now was not the time or the place. Good. It was never going to be the time or the place to talk about their shared abandonment issues. Ever. “Are you satisfied now that you’ve shown up Hux?”

 

“Almost.”

 

She sighed.

 

“Rey, we’ve only been here for an hour. We haven’t even danced yet. We can’t leave right now.”

 

“Wait a minute,” she said, turning to glare at him. “Who said anything about dancing?”

 

“Parties generally require dancing,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

 

“Okay, once again, Be-- _Kylo_ , I grew up on Jakku, as you so eloquently put it, a ‘scavenging sand rat.’ We didn’t have parties. We barely had bars. Stop acting like this stuff is so obvious.” She felt her face heating up as she admitted just how backwater her upbringing was. No formal schooling, no real friends, and her parents--

 

No, she wasn’t going to think about that one right now.

 

“Okay, okay.” _I’m sorry_ , he added silently.

 

Rey figured that the Supreme Leader couldn’t be heard uttering anything remotely apology-like, so he had to say it silently. She glared at him. _Apology not accepted._

 

He sighed. _I’m trying,_ he said. _Please do this for me._

 

_I still hate you._

 

_No you don’t._

 

She kept glaring, even as he tugged on her hand to move on. “Where are we going?” she asked aloud.

 

“To dance.”

 

She stopped and dropped his hand. “Kylo, I can’t dance.”

 

“Nonsense,” he said, moving back to stand in front of her. He was standing so close that she could see the details lines of the scar on his face. The proximity made her breath catch. “If you can figure out how to swing a lightsaber without any proper training, you can figure out how to dance.”

 

“Can the Force guide me through the steps?” she asked sarcastically.

 

He smirked at her. “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

 

* * *

 

Things were going about as smoothly as Ben had expected. Hux had made contact earlier in the evening than he had expected, but that was fine. He had felt something down the bond when Rey and Hux’s date were speaking, but Rey didn’t want to talk about it, so Ben decided to let it go. He’d won that round with Hux. Youm Xizang may have been one of the richest people in the galaxy, but Rey was the most powerful. And definitely the best-dressed.

 

But dancing. How could Rey not know how to dance? Dancing wasn’t something that needed to be taught. One of Ben’s earliest memories was dancing with his parents on the lawn at an old family home they had hidden away on Naboo, and he rarely had any good memories of his parents doing something together with him without fighting. One of the biggest downsides to signing on with Snoke and the First Order had been that he wasn’t allowed to dance around by himself anymore. It was never explicitly stated, but it didn’t have to be. One simply didn’t dance around like an idiot on star destroyers owned by the First Order.

 

He could see the reluctance written all over her face, and he leaned in close. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

 

“Are you really asking me that?” She sounded annoyed, but she didn’t step back.

 

“Rey,” he said, leaning in to whisper in her ear. “Relax. Follow the music. Let your body do what it wants to do. And, failing that, just watch me.”

 

He felt a tingle of pleasure shoot down his spine. Good. Whispering in her ear was having the effect he wanted it to have, given Rey’s reaction echoing in his body.

 

“The things I do for my friends,” grumbled Rey under her breath. Then, louder, she said, “Okay, fine. Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”

 

Well, it wasn’t the enthusiastic answer he would have liked, but he hadn’t really expected anything else.

 

He could sense her nervousness down the bond, but he couldn’t tell exactly what it was from. There were a million reasons for her to be nervous and for the first time, he started to feel bad for the position he’d put her in. Not only was he forcing her into the thick of enemy territory, but he was also making her dance. All so that he could stick it in Hux’s face.

 

Maybe Rey was right. Maybe being Supreme Leader was enough.

 

_Nah, no way. After everything you’ve done to get where you are? Use EVERY opportunity to stick it in Hux’s face,_ he told himself.

 

“Relax, Rey,” he said, nearly giving her a very un-Supreme Leader-like smile in full view of all of the most important people in the First Order. “Dance with me, darling.”

 

He dragged her onto the dance floor. He didn’t recognize the song that was playing, but he caught on to the steps quickly. It was just like one of the danced he’d had to learn as a boy, being dragged along in his mother’s footsteps as she traveled from system to system, attempting to build the New Republic out of the ashes of the Empire.

 

She was still sending non-verbal _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you_ messages down the bond, but they started to taper off as soon as they started dancing. And even though they didn’t dance as well as they fought (nor did it give him quite the same tension and excitement as fighting with her), they still managed to hold it together much better than she had implied they would.

 

“You’re much more graceful than you give yourself credit for,” he said as he twirled her around.

 

“All that Jedi training is really starting to pay off, I guess.”

 

“Did you just crack a joke?” he said, fighting to keep a delighted grin off his face.

 

“Maybe,” she said as she pulled away before spinning back to him. “This whole dancing thing is weird.”

 

“That’s because these dances were originally choreographed by Quermians.”

 

“What do Quermians look like?” she asked.

 

“Long necks. Two brains, but only one head. Four arms. Spineless, literally and figuratively.”

 

“We definitely didn’t get those on Jakku. There’s so many different parts of the galaxy that I didn’t even know existed. So many different races of humans and aliens. It’s incredible,” she said, sounding sad.

 

“It’s not your fault you grew up...the way you did,” he said, trying to avoid using the phrase ‘a scavenging desert rat’ again. “What matters now is that you take every opportunity that you have to explore the galaxy around you.”

 

“What, leading the First Order with you?” she spat.

 

“Well, yes, obviously I want that,” he snapped. Wasn’t seeing everything that the First Order had to offer her doing anything to sway her mind? Surely, after a lifetime of roughing it on Jakku--living in an _AT-AT_ , for Force’s sake!--she would want to give in and take advantage of every single luxury that he could offer her?

 

Because that had been the other part of his plan: if Rey could see all of the glory and opulence that ruling with the Supreme Leader of the First Order could offer her, maybe she would change her mind. It was pretty unlikely, Ben admitted, because of how stubborn she was.

 

It was one of the things he loved about her, as frustrating as it was.

 

“Ben,” she said, stopping in the middle of the dance floor. “Kylo. Whatever. You know that my answer to that will never change. I can’t abandon them for you. Please don’t make me go over this with you again.”

 

His breath caught in his throat. There were so many things he wanted to say, but--”Okay,” he said, reaching out to grab her so that they could resume dancing before anyone thought they were trying to make a scene.

 

He could tell that she knew that the conversation wasn’t over, but she didn’t argue with him. There would be time for that later. Much later. After this party ended, and after they did...whatever they were going to do after they left. Hopefully something involving a complete lack of clothing.

 

He lost track of how long they danced for. One of the benefits of spending hours a day training to fight, he supposed, was that it gave him good stamina for dancing. That was definitely not what his training with Snoke was meant for him to do, but whatever, he was enjoying himself too much to care.

 

_Wait, enjoying?_ The Supreme Leader of the First Order didn’t _enjoy_ anything, aside from Force-choking people and the occasional ‘blowing up a planet with a Death Star.’ The thought shocked him so much that he stumbled. Rey, lost in her own thoughts (that were closed off from him, for once), rushed to steady him.

 

“Need a break?” she asked.

 

“Don’t worry about me. I can keep going all night long,” he said, surprising himself by how easily the innuendo came to him.

 

“Is that so?” she said, leaning in to give him a hungry look.

 

“Maybe later you’ll find out just how much stamina I have,” he whispered. He caught her eyes flickering down to his lips, like she was thinking of kissing him again, and then--

 

He felt a flash of panic down the bond. “I’ll be right back,” she said, quickly ducking out of his grasp.

 

“Rey?” he asked, confused.

 

“Uh, washroom,” she said, turning and all but sprinting away from him.

 

_What the kriff was that about?_ he wondered, watching her walk away in that absolutely enchanting dress. He found himself wondering if she was wearing underwear. It was so skintight. The idea was enough to make his cock twitch, and he shook his head, trying to clear the image. This was definitely not the time and the place for _that._

 

Luckily, another distraction was brought to his attention. “Supreme Leader,” he heard Hux’s sniveling voice say from behind him. If he had been paying attention, he would have sensed Hux approaching him, but he had been too distracted by Rey to notice anything else. Again.

 

“What is it, Hux?” Ben said in a tone that he hoped conveyed how little of a shit he gave about whatever Hux was about to say.

 

“Why exactly did you bring the scavenger here?” Hux asked.

 

Ben whipped around to glare at Hux. “What makes you think that’s any of your business, _General_ Hux?”

 

He saw Hux’s eyes flick to Ben’s hand like he was afraid of being Force choked. _Good. Let him remember what I can do to him._

 

“Why bother?” Hux asked. “Is she going to join us? She can’t possibly be the most powerful woman in the galaxy, and she is responsible for the death of our beloved Supreme Leader Snoke. How can we trust her? She’ll go back to that Resistance scum as soon as she’s out of our sight.”

 

“She’s here so that we can show her exactly what the First Order can offer her,” Ben said. It wasn’t a complete lie...but he was definitely omitting a lot of reasons why he wanted Rey there with him. “If we can sway her to our side, we’ll not only have the most powerful woman in the galaxy on our side, but we’ll finally be able to stamp out the last of the Resistance once she tells us where exactly they’re hiding.”

 

Hux nodded, but Ben could tell that he didn’t believe him. “I see.”

 

“Are you questioning my judgement?” Ben said in his best ‘I am Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and definitely not Ben Solo anymore’ voice.

 

“Of course I’m not questioning your judgement,” said Hux. Ben looked around and noticed that everyone had stopped dancing, talking, eating, and drunkenly hitting on the waitstaff to stare at them. “ _We_ are.”

 

* * *

 

Rey knew that something was wrong. Sure, she was definitely feeling some of her own panic right now--nearly kissing Ben (no, _Kylo_ ) in front of the entire senior management of the First Order had done that--but this was definitely not her panic, and this was definitely not the ‘oh shit I’m about to kiss someone I absolutely should not be kissing’ kind of panic. This was the ‘oh shit we are under attack and need to get the kriff out of here right now’ kind of panic.

 

_What’s going on?_ she shouted down the bond.

 

_Hux,_ came the reply. _He’s trying to pull a mutiny._ He cursed, and she started to run to where she’d last seen him.

 

_Are you okay?_

 

He didn’t respond, but she felt a rush of emotions fly at her. Mostly anger, annoyance, and--was that fear?

 

It was, she realized. _He’s afraid of something._ What could he possibly have to be afraid of? She knew how well he could fight. He could hold his own. He hadn’t worked his way up to be Supreme Leader for nothing. No, this was something else. Fear for--

 

_Get out of here, Rey. Save yourself._

 

She rolled her eyes. Trust Ben to be overdramatic about this. _I can hold my own. Besides, we fight better together._

 

She finally found the room she’d left him in, and skidded to a half when she saw the scene in front of her. Hux and Ben were standing in the middle of the room, a ring of commanders and stormtroopers surrounding them. Some of them had their blasters turned on Ben, but some of them--

 

_What kind of mutiny is this, anyway?_ she thought.

 

_I think a civil war is about to break out among the First Order,_ he said grimly. _And we are in the center of it._

 

“You can’t possibly think that you could have gotten away with bringing the last Jedi to the _First Order Anniversary Party_!” Hux shouted.

 

“Try me!” Ben shouted back.

 

“There’s enough of us to usurp you,” Hux hissed. “Your leadership abilities are lacking. Your allegiances are sketchy. How do we know you’re not working with the Resistance to bring us down from the inside?”

 

“You’re doing that just fine on your own,” Ben said, sweeping his arms to indicate the room around them. “Look at us! All of the highest commanders in the First Order, and we’re all about to tear ourselves apart!”

 

Rey watched the scene unfolding, her heart pounding. Sure, she was afraid--there were enough people and blasters in the room to cause some serious carnage--but she was also hopeful. If the First Order was about to tear itself apart, this was going to go better than she ever could have imagined. Not only was she finally going to get laid (she hoped), but she was able to watch the First Order destroy itself from the inside out. Mission kriffing completed.

 

_You’re only going to get laid if you and Ben survive this, idiot,_ some sane part of her brain said.

 

“Your days are over, Kylo Ren!” screamed Hux. “Time to end! And _how dare you bring a better date than me!_ ”

 

And with that, the room exploded.

 

* * *

 

Ben knew that Hux was about to shoot him a moment before it happened, and he had his lightsaber out and ready to deflect Hux’s shot. “Did you really think it was going to be that easy, Hux?” he shouted as he deflected another blast with his lightsaber.

 

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Hux spat. He was so angry that he was nearly foaming at the mouth _._ “I was so close. So close! But you woke up in the throne room a moment too soon.”

 

Ben cursed. He _knew_ that Hux had done--or nearly done--something that day. He deflected more laser blasts, coming from people in the room around him. But they weren’t all aimed at him, he noticed as he quickly scanned the room around him. They were all fighting amongst themselves.

 

_Rey._ Where was Rey? He’d tried to tell her to get out, this wasn’t her battle, he just wanted her to be somewhere safe and far away, but she was too damn stubborn to leave him alone. But she was the one person that everyone in the room (except for him) agreed should die, and she didn’t even have a working lightsaber--

 

Or did she? He heard the sound of a lightsaber flying around and deflecting laser blasts, but it wasn’t coming from him. _When did she fix Anakin’s lightsaber?_ he wondered. _Or did she manage to make a new one?_ But how would she have known how to do that? _Did Luke teach her before he_ \--

 

Ben’s thoughts were interrupted as he narrowly avoided a blaster shot. He cursed, then reached out with his Force sense to find Rey. _There she is._ Even though he couldn’t see her--he wasn’t going to take his eyes off of Hux for one second--he knew she was holding her own. And even though he feared for her life (her life, not his, his life didn’t matter, not really), he knew that she was right: they did fight better together. They fought like two halves of one whole.

 

_Not the time to think about that now,_ he thought as Hux screamed obscenities at him, followed by a barrage of laser blasts. Hux had tried to hide it, but he was nearly as unhinged as Kylo Ren was. Something about being so close to the top of the First Order did that to people, maybe. _We really need to hire a therapist,_ Ben thought. _We all need extensive therapy._

 

“Supreme Leader!” he heard one of his commanders shout. “We’re loyal to you! We’ll take down this opportunistic traitors!”

 

“Good,” he shouted back in his best Kylo Ren voice. “Kill them. Kill them all.”

 

Hux had vanished. _That’s not good._ Ben reached out to try to sense the mutinous commander, but there was too much going on, and his Force senses were overwhelmed by his desire to make sure Rey was safe.

 

“Ben,” she shouted as she fought her way closer to him. He turned to look at her, desperate to know if she was okay. But to his surprise, she had a look of wicked delight on her face.

 

“You think this is funny?” he shouted. “You could be killed!”

 

“So could you,” she shot back as she deflected three more laser blasts without even thinking about it. But it didn’t seem like they were specifically aiming for her. The fighting amongst all of the commanders and generals in the room had gotten so heated that it seemed like they’d forgotten about Ben, Hux, and Rey completely. “Can we _finally_ leave now?”

 

He would have laughed at her tone if he wasn’t so torn apart by the possibility that she could be harmed--or worse, killed. “Yes,” he said. “We can finally kriffing leave.” He grabbed her hand, the other still holding his lightsaber to reflect stray laser blasts, and they fought their way out of the party and back to a transport back to the hotel.

 

Neither of them said anything as they sat in the transport, gasping for air. Ben’s mind was spinning with everything that had just happened, but then he heard Rey laughing. It started off as a giggle, then grew until she was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes.

 

“What could you possibly find funny about this situation?”

 

“The First Order is tearing itself apart,” she managed to gasp.

 

“How the kriff is that funny?!”

 

But she was laughing too hard to respond. He probed at the bond, trying to figure out what she wasn’t telling him, but no luck. His thoughts were spinning too fast for him to focus on hers, which seemed to be spinning just as fast.

 

* * *

 

She was still laughing when the transport pulled up to the hotel, and Ben made some comment about how nobody in the First Order knew where they were staying, thank Force.

 

“I never, ever thought that anything like _that_ would happen,” he said to a still-giggling Rey as they got on the elevator, “but I did have a feeling that things could go horribly wrong.”

 

“Then why did you ask me?” asked Rey, finally sobering up. “If you knew that it was going to cause problems. Why did you want me here?”

 

“Are you really asking me that?” he asked, giving her a look that made her heart beat nervously. It was a look that said _You know why, even if you’re too stubborn to admit it._

 

“Ben,” she said after a moment, unsure of what to say.

 

“You’re the most important thing in my life,” he said quickly, as if he needed to get the words out before he lost his nerve. “I thought that maybe, if you saw what it was like by my side--”

 

“You already told me that,” she said softly. “You know what my answer is.”

 

“I know,” he said sadly, “but I still had to try. I still hoped that we could--” He stopped and looked away. Rey got the sense that he was struggling for the right words.

 

“You thought what?” she asked, stepping closer to him. When he didn’t answer, she reached out to pull his face back to hers to look him in the eyes. “What, Ben?”

 

She knew what he wanted half a second before he moved down to kiss her. It was hard to hide that sort of thing from the bond, as wide open as it was now. And it was even harder to hide how badly both of them wanted it.

 

It was a tender kiss. Not like the heated ones they’d shared before the party. It was a kiss that said _I’m sorry I dragged you into this, I’m sorry I can’t be what you need,_ and _I’m sorry that I can’t pretend that you don’t mean anything to me anymore._

 

_I can’t pretend, either,_ she hoped her kiss conveyed. _But I don’t know how to compromise on this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry jk there are no Emo Kylo Ren tweets. It’s a tad more dramatic than I would like, but the actual storyline ran away with me. Next time. I promise. 
> 
> In other news, headcanon time: Hux wasn’t afraid of being Force choked. He was actually definitely hoping Kylo will Force choke him again. He totally gets off on that. Kylo has no idea how badly Hux wants to have hate sex with him.


	4. Is this how you end a date?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry about this. I don’t think my writing teachers ever intended for me to use my skills in this manner.
> 
> (And by that, I mean that this is pretty much complete smut. Skip if it you're not into that.)

He pulled back and looked at her in such a deep way that she knew he could see down to the very core of her soul. (Would he have been able to see her so deeply without the Force bond? She didn’t know.) “Rey,” he said, his voice think with emotion. “I--”

 

“Please don’t say it,” she whispered. She’d already cried enough in front of him. She didn’t want him to make her cry again.

 

“Love is when you mostly listen to someone talk and then every so often you insult them,” he whispered. “At least, I’m pretty sure, based on my parents.”

 

She closed her eyes, trying to push back the tears. She couldn’t take the double hit of the reminder of what kind of role models _her_ parents had been as well as the knowledge of how he felt about her.

 

She didn’t want to be having this conversation. So she did the only thing she could do to make him shut up: she grabbed him and kissed him. Again. In a much less tender, emotional manner than their previous kiss. She could sense that he didn’t really want the conversation to be over, but when she shoved him up against the wall of the elevator and trailed kisses down his neck, his hormones took over and shut those thoughts down.

 

The elevator arrived at their floor and they broke apart just long enough for Rey to drag him to the door of her room. He grabbed her from behind and kissed her neck as she fumbled with the lock, struggling to remember the code. The sensation of his fingers trailing across her exposed skin where the cutouts were on her dress combined with the way his other hand was running down her thigh was making it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

 

“Can’t you get the damn door open?” he whispered into her ear.

 

“I can’t remember the kriffing lock combination,” she panted, leaning back to grind into him, enjoying the feeling of how hard he was just from a few (admittedly, amazing) kisses.

 

“Just use the Force.”

 

“ _You_ use the Force.” There was no way she had enough brainpower to manage trying a new Force trick right now. All of the blood in her body was flowing down to create an delicious heat between her legs.

 

The hand that had been running down her thigh moved, leaving her skin suddenly cold where it had been, and then Rey heard a beep as he unlocked the door. He pushed her through, then slammed it shut behind him.

 

They stood there, staring at each other for a moment. “Did I tell you how amazing that dress is?” Ben said, taking in the whole sight of her. He was looking at her in a way that no one had ever looked at her before. It wasn’t just desire--she’d seen that look before--but it was something stronger, like there was an element of amazement that she was there, with him, in this moment. She couldn’t handle the intensity of it, so she gave him her best ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ smile and tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed his look instead of responding to it in an appropriate, healthy manner.

 

“No, you didn’t,” she said as she slowly walked up to him and put her hands on his waist.

 

“Well, that dress is amazing,” he said. She could tell he was itching to Force tear it off her body, but she wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of getting her naked so quickly. Besides, it was a great dress, and she’d promised Connix that she’d return it to her unharmed.

 

“I’m glad you appreciate it,” she said in what was almost a purr. She didn’t even know she was capable of sounding like that. It was like she had this whole other side to her that she hadn’t known about until…

 

Well, until the Force had awakened in her, and with it, the bond to Ben.

 

She’d always hated the idea of “soulmates.” It was stupid to think that there was just one person out in the galaxy that you were “destined” to be with. But she couldn’t deny the connection she had to Ben. She’d never felt anything like it, and she doubted she’d ever feel anything like it with anyone else. Which is why that it was really, really frustrating that it had to be with him and not with, say, Poe or Connix or someone, anyone who wasn’t in the First Order.

 

“As amazing as that dress is,” he said, interrupting her thoughts, “how about you take it off now?”

 

She smirked. She wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. “Well, these arm wraps take _so_ long to take off,” she said.

 

“Why do you wear them?”

 

“They’re good protection against the sun on Jakku. Also, they look kind of badass, and everyone in this galaxy wears overly complicated clothing.”

 

Ben thought about it for a second. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Why do we all wear such complicated clothing?”

 

She shrugged. “I guess because it looks cool?”

 

“Pity it makes it so difficult to take off,” he said, reaching to Rey’s right shoulder to run his fingers over the edge of the arm band there. “How do these come off, anyway?”

 

“They wrap,” said Rey. She reached over with her left hand to move his fingers to the edge of the binding. “You see? There’s the edge of it.”

 

She could tell that he was itching to just tear the whole damn thing off, but he was surprisingly gentle as he unwound the wrap surrounding her am. When he finally pulled off the end of it, he pulled her arm up and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. It felt like sparks shot up through her veins from where he kissed her, and she was surprised to learn how sensitive the skin was there.

 

“Your arms are so pale,” he said, dropping her hand to run his fingers over the tan line at the top of her arm.

 

“Too much sun is dangerous,” she said. “I had to keep covered up on Jakku. Old habits die hard, I guess.”

 

“That, they do,” he said as he trailed his fingers up her left arm to find the top of the binding there. It made her heart beat in a way that she wasn’t used to, seeing how tenderly he was touching her. She had an idea of how deeply his feelings went for her, and it terrified her to know that they might have gone even deeper than that. Judging from the extreme passion and anger he conducted himself with, it stood to reason that he felt equally as strong about her. And she was very uncomfortable with it, to say the least.

 

She could sense how nervous he was about undressing her by the way his fingertips were trailing slowly along her now arm wrap-free left arm. She wanted to reassure him that it was okay, she didn’t know what she was doing either, but that she was 100% on board with what they were doing right now. Well, what they were doing physically, anyway. She didn’t want to think about the emotional aspect of it, and they were suddenly moving too slowly for her to put that out of her mind.

 

She reached up to grab his shoulders and pull him back in for another kiss. His arms wrapped around her, one of his hands moving up to rest between her shoulder blades, and the other moving down to cup her ass. She moved her hand up until it was tangled in his hair and pulled slightly. He gasped and dug his nails in where he was holding her. _Guess he likes that_ , she thought.

 

_I didn’t know I was into that. You should try it again at some point._

 

She smiled as he moved his mouth over to nibble at her ear. He still didn’t seem completely sure of what to do with his hands, so she gave him a little Force bond nudge. _Just touch me. I’ll tell you if I don’t like it. And you’ll definitely know if I do like it._ In addition to being a positive feedback loop, their Force bond was a way to instantly know if the other person liked what was happening or not. Neat, even if it was probably an inappropriate use of the Force.

 

He ran his hand down along her thigh, then back up, slipping it under her dress. She gave him a wicked grin as he realized with a jolt that she wasn’t wearing underwear. “The dress is too tight _,_ ” she said as casually as she could manage in her current state. “It’s a problem _._ ”

 

“There are many problems with this dress,” he said, pulling back to look at her. “It’s too difficult to take off, for one. But not being able to wear underwear is definitely not one of those problems.”

 

“You like that, don’t you,” she said as she dragged him backwards towards the bed. “It’s been driving you crazy all evening, the struggle to keep your hands off of me. Hasn’t it?” With that, she turned and pushed him backwards on the bed. He started to protest, but she held a finger up to his lips. _Watch._

 

She leaned down and pulled off her boots slowly, trying to think of a sexy way to get the dress off. It hadn’t been easy to get into. There was a hidden zipper in the side, but it kept catching on the fabric of the dress when she was putting it on earlier, and it sat at an awkward angle on her body. She’d had to rely on a mirror and the Force to make sure the laces holding the back of the dress together were positioned appropriately. It had taken a lot of focus to get it right when she’d put it on, and she didn’t know if Ben had enough self-control to keep from tearing something. Besides, she liked making him watch. It turned her on to know how badly he wanted her when he wasn’t allowed to touch her.

 

“How did you manage to hide a lightsaber in that outfit, anyway?” he asked.

 

“Very carefully,” she answered vaguely. There was no way she was going to be able to remove this dress without obvious effort. _Kriff._

 

“Do you need help with that dress?” he asked as he sensed where her thoughts were going.

 

“No,” she said, twisting to find the zipper hidden in the side of the dress. “Yes,” she said a moment later when she couldn’t find it.

 

“Come here,” he said.

 

She walked over so that she was standing between his knees, facing him. “There’s a little zipper on the side somewhere,” she said, lifting her arm up to indicate which side it was on. “But I’m struggling to find it now.”

 

“How did you get this dress on in the first place if you’re struggling so hard to get it off again?” he said as his fingers ran along the side of the dress, causing her to shiver. Fine, so that was an advantage of asking for his help. The sensation of his fingertips trailing across her skin sent sparks shooting all through her body. She wondered if it had anything to do with a sensitivity to the Force, or if it was just the natural chemistry they had. He finally found the zipper and tugged gently for it to open.

 

She stepped back quickly and shimmied out of the dress without answering his question. _Well, that attempt to be sexy was a bust,_ she thought. But when she saw his expression, that made up for the whole humiliating experience.

 

If she thought he’d been looking at her intensely before, it was nothing compared to the way he was looking at her now. Sure, some of it was probably just that he’d never seen a naked woman before (she assumed, based on all of his actions until now), but some of it…

 

“Please say something,” she blurted out, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around her body self-consciously. She’d never been particularly body-shy...but she’d also never been trying to show off her body like this to anyone. She wasn’t sure if this was a good reaction or not.

 

“Rey,” he breathed. “You’re beautiful.”

 

She didn’t know how to respond to the emotions she was getting from him, so she just said “You’re wearing too much clothing.”

 

He gave her a wicked grin, and used the Force to blow his shirt open.

 

“Drama queen,” she said, rolling her eyes. She couldn’t keep the amusement from leaking down the bond--or the heat she felt blaze through her body as she took stock of his chest. Again. She pushed him back down on the bed and climbed on top of him. She briefly thought about pinning his arms down again, because that had been fun before, but then they started roaming all over her body and she decided against it because it just felt so _good_ , like making every cell in her body come alive.

 

“Stupid clothes,” he said as they had to pause for him to fully unwrap the jacket from himself. It had a weird way of tying that the Force couldn’t quite undo.

 

“They are not the easiest things to wear when you’re trying to get laid,” she commented, running her hands along the parts of Ben’s chest and stomach that were exposed while he wrestled his arms out of the sleeves. She wondered how pissed off he’d be if she ripped them off.

 

“Please don’t rip my clothing,” he said as he finally wrestled free of the sleeves and tossed the shirt somewhere across the room. “This is my fanciest shirt.”

 

“Fine,” she said as she bent down to kiss him again, letting her hands roam all over his chest and arms. “You have really nice arms,” she said between kisses as she ran her hands over the muscles in his upper arms. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

 

“All that lightsaber training,” he replied. “I have to be able to keep up with you, after all.”

 

The thought of fighting by his side, the way that they moved together, did something funny to the nerves in her stomach. She felt it echoed in him. Neither of them wanted to think about the things they couldn’t change. Not right now.

 

Right now, she felt like she was on fire. She couldn’t get enough of him. She’d had no idea how good it felt to have another person pressed up against her like that. His skin was so hot, and she knew she was equally hot, a scorching heat radiating from her core. She hoped that they wouldn’t actually set something on fire (Force fire? Was that a thing?), but it definitely felt like a possibility in that moment.

 

He moaned her name as she dug her nails into his sides and trailed her tongue down his neck. He tasted like salt and smoke and something else that she couldn’t name. It was intoxicating and completely foreign to her and she wanted _more_.

 

_Later,_ he said down the Force bond. _But first, I want to taste_ you _._ He sat up and pushed her gently so that she was lying on her back, then he leaned over to kiss her. She reached up to run a hand through his hair and tugged it gently, earning her a small gasp. She used her other hand to run it down his back to pull him closer to her.

 

He seemed to have gotten over his awkwardness and insecurity about how little experience he’d had with this, because he dived right in. He reached down to touch her breasts, brushing his thumbs over her nipples. She moaned softly, the sensation a thousand times better than when she had done the same action to herself earlier, before the party. She felt his satisfaction down the Force bond along with that same feedback loop of ‘she was turned on because he was turned on about her being turned on about him being turned on.’ Not that she had anything to compare it to, but she felt like it would be hard to beat that.

 

“Your breasts are so perfect,” he breathed as he trailed kisses down her neck and onto her chest. She moaned softly as she felt his tongue flick over a nipple. Encouraged by her reaction, he kept going with his tongue as he moved his hand further down her body, his fingertips trailing along the lines of her stomach. He paused before they made their way all the way down between her legs, and she shifted, trying to make contact. Teasing wasn’t fair, and she was so desperate to be touched.

 

“So only you get to be a tease, huh?” he said, pausing to look up at her. “You and that damn dress and your damn fingers over the Force bond.”

 

“Shut up and touch me, Ben,” she said, pulling his hair and digging her nails into his arm to emphasize her point.

 

He smiled at her, then he moved his hand down to trace along her inner thigh. He gave a small gasp when he felt how slick she was, and she tried to send an extra _touch me, you idiot_ down the bond for emphasis. If she’d been thinking more clearly, she would have been nervous about doing something so intimate with someone who was supposed to be her nemesis...but she wasn’t thinking clearly; she was lost in a haze of hormones, chemistry, and emotions. It was intoxicating.

 

He kissed her between her breasts, then slowly kissed his way down her stomach. The hand he had between her legs reached up, his thumb brushing tentatively over her clit. She moaned and opened her legs wider, asking for more. Encouraged by that, he finally moved his lips down to flick his tongue over her clit at the same time as he slipped a couple of fingers into her.

 

It was even better than she had imagined it would be. (As hard as she’d tried, she hadn’t been able to resist thinking about it. Not that she’d ever admit it, but he’d already seen all of her fantasies about him anyway, thanks to the stupid Force bond.) She was burning up inside, and she could feel how turned-on he was by it. And damn if it didn’t make it even hotter to know exactly how hard he was and exactly how badly he had wanted to do this to her.

 

_You taste so good,_ he said down the bond, but she was too far gone to pay attention to it. All of her attention was focused on his fingers and his tongue. And for someone who had no experience with this, he was doing a damn good job. It wasn’t long at all until she was moaning, nearly begging for release. Her muscles clenched, and she was _so close--_

 

And then he stopped and pulled away. She hissed and tried to grab his head to move it back to where it was, but he stepped out of her grasp. She looked up and realized that he was undoing his belt. Well, okay then. As much as she wanted--no, needed--release, she had no problem with this turn of events.

 

She pushed herself up to grab his waist and pull him close to her. She would have tried to undo his belt or take off his pants or something to help move things along, but given how complicated every other item of clothing either of them had worn had been to remove, she figured she’d just let him take care of this one. So she kissed him, savoring the way she tasted on her tongue. _I didn’t know I was into that,_ she thought to herself. They were both learning a lot about themselves tonight.

 

Rey slid her hands around his waist, then she moved her fingers further into the waistband of his pants (which he was still struggling to take off) to cup his ass. “Can’t you get those pants off any faster?” she said, almost embarrassed by how much of a whine it was.

 

“Believe me, if I could take them off any faster, I would,” he said. “All of our clothing sucks.”

 

“Agreed,” she said, nibbling at his ear.

 

He cursed, then finally, _finally_ got his pants off. Rey’s stomach fluttered nervously for the first time since taking that dress off. What was she supposed to do with her hands? _Just touch me,_ he answered, echoing what she’d said to him earlier. She could feel how badly he needed her hands on him, and as fun as teasing him had been earlier, they needed to get this show on the road. She was aching to have him inside of her.

 

She moved one hand, trailing her fingertips along the side of his hip until they brushed up against his cock. He hissed, and she moved her hand so that it was wrapped around him. She had figured he’d have a big cock, given his height, and she wasn’t disappointed. She flicked her thumb over the tip, enjoying how wet it was. Between the both of them, they were both so ready to go that he wasn’t going to have any trouble getting inside of her.

 

She tugged her hand gently, swirling her thumb around the tip of his cock as she did so. She could feel the waves of pleasure echoed in her body, and after a minute of that, his self-control broke, and he pushed her back down on the bed.

 

_Yeah, it’s about time,_ she found herself thinking as he lay over her, lining their hips up in a perfect manner. She felt his cock brush up against her clit, and she moaned. She’d had no idea that that action would feel so good. That was something to explore another time.

 

“Wait,” he said, pulling back a little bit. “Do you have a condom?”

 

She blinked.

 

“Neither of us needs the galaxy’s most Force-sensitive baby running around right now,” he continued.

 

“Oh,” she said. “We don’t need to worry about that. There’s contraceptive hormones pumped into the water supply the Resistance uses.”

 

He stared at her. “What.”

 

“Apparently, the stress of always being on the run and trying to overthrow a massive fascist regime makes some people really horny because orgasms are a great stress cure,” she said. “There were a lot of close calls before the medics decided that it was just easier to throw contraceptives in the water supply so that we’re all getting them.”

 

“What,” he said again. And then something clicked. “Wait a minute, are you including yourself in that? Are you sleeping with any of them?”

 

She rolled her eyes, then she reached up to kiss him. “Relax,” she said. “I’m horny as all hell, but not over any of them.” _Only you,_ she added silently, unable to bring herself to say it aloud. “You’re too jealous for you own good.” She kissed him again. His jealousy and possessiveness really pissed her off, but she needed to reassure him right now because she might actually kill him if he ruined the moment by throwing a hissy fit over the fact that she spent most of her time surrounded by people who she could be sleeping with who weren’t him.

 

“I’m not jealous,” he said defensively. “I just like knowing what’s mine.”

 

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight,” she said, grabbing his chin to make him look her in the eye. “I am not yours. I am not anyone else’s, either. I am mine, and mine alone. But,” she added, reaching up to kiss him on the cheek, “I am here with you, and only you. I don’t want to be with anyone else. Please don’t insult me by acting like you don’t trust me when I say that.”

 

He kissed her slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just--” He paused, unable to articulate all of his abandonment issues.

 

“I know,” she said. She had the same issues. And not that she ever wanted to discuss them, but if they _did_ discuss them at some point, it was definitely not going to be in a moment where she needed him so badly that she thought she might explode. And knowing how powerful she was with the Force, she’d probably take half the planet with her. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” she said, kissing his neck. “Can we please, _please_ continue?”

 

He moaned, and kissed her again. She took that as a _yes, 100%, let’s keep going_.

 

_Okay, now for the part that_ really _requires good coordination_ , she thought. She suddenly found herself wishing she’d read more erotica. Was he just supposed to, like, slide right in? Clearly, he had no idea either, because he shifted around ineffectually. Not that a bit of grinding felt bad, but it wasn’t what either of them wanted.

 

“Hold on,” she said, breaking off the kiss. “This isn’t working.” She reached a hand down and guided him to her entrance, and gave him a gentle nudge. He slid in, agonizingly slowly, both of them savoring the sensation of finally doing something about all that build-up.

 

Ben cursed. “You feel amazing,” he breathed in Rey’s ear.

 

“So do you,” came her equally breathy reply. She couldn’t believe how good it felt, and how _right_ it felt. It was like the Force bond was almost a sentient thing that had been rooting for them this entire time and it wanted to do everything in its power to make this happen. They were perfectly in sync, which was unheard of for two people having sex for the first time.

 

Of course, being perfectly in sync wasn’t necessarily a good thing if they couldn’t figure out how to get a good rhythm. At first there was a bit of uncoordinated thrusting that didn’t do much for either of them, both of them trying to move their legs so that they were in a comfortable position. But then Rey decided that she’d had enough of that, and she pushed him off of her and onto his back. The downside to that was that he slipped out of her, and they were both pretty unhappy with the sudden lack of contact. The upside, however, was that it was just as satisfying the second time for him to enter her, plus they were in a position that was much easier to coordinate.

 

There was just something about knowing that she had someone so powerful laying under her, wanting her so desperately. She didn’t know what that said about her, but she suspected it wasn’t very light side of her. She loved being in control of him, and she knew exactly how much he loved it, too, thanks to the Force bond feedback loop. Maybe the mighty Kylo Ren wouldn’t bow to any man (or alien), but he sure as hell would bow to one woman.

 

They were able to build up a good rhythm after that. Rey sat back, her hands on his chest, and she could tell that he was thinking that he’d never seen anything so beautiful as her in that moment. His hands were on her waist and lower back, his nails digging into her. They were both going to leave claw marks all over each other from this, but Rey knew that neither of them would have it any other way.

 

They were both so wound up that it didn’t take long until they were both moaning, muscles tense, nearly dying with the need for release. And then, finally, they exploded. She could have sworn that time stopped in that moment. They were both so powerful that combined, something ripple out through the Force, and she knew that every Force-sensitive being in the galaxy was going to feel _something_ rippling through them. And then time started moving again, and Rey realized that she was crying from the sheer passion of it all. What was it about him that made her cry so much?

 

They both needed a moment after that, muscles quaking too hard to untangle for a moment. And then, things calmed down enough for Rey to slide off and lay down next to Ben.

 

“Are you--are you crying?” he asked, looking at her. _Was it that bad?_ she heard him wonder down the bond.

 

“Bad?” she asked. “Are you kidding me? That was the best thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Hell, I think half the galaxy felt that.”

 

“What are the tears about, then?” he asked, concerned.

 

“I don’t know,” she said, still breathing heavily. “It’s just a thing that’s happening.”

 

“You cry a lot.”

 

“You _make_ me cry a lot.”

 

He shifted, putting an arm around her waist to pull her closer so that he could nuzzle her neck. “I’m sorry,” he said, placing a kiss at the spot where her neck met her shoulder.

 

She didn’t respond, but she did wrap her arm around his and took his hand in hers. No matter how mind-blowingly amazing sex had just been, she wasn’t ready to forgive him. Not for everything. She didn’t know if she ever would be. But she didn’t want to just leave him hanging. That was probably the fault of all the post-orgasm oxytocin running through her brain, though.

 

She shifted, trying to get more comfortable, but then she felt something strange going on.

 

“What the--?” said Ben as a bunch of post-sex body fluids leaked out of Rey.

 

They paused for a moment. “That was weird,” say Rey as they tried to shift.

 

“Does that always happen after sex?”

 

“I have no idea,” she admitted. “Probably.” There was a lot of it there. She was actually kind of impressed. “We should shower,” she said, pushing herself up. The hand that was holding hers didn’t let go.

 

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t you want to spoon?”

 

Trust Ben to be so needy. “I want to shower,” she said. “You can come with me, if you want.” He perked up at those words, pushing himself out of bed with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Rey had to hide a smirk as she thought about the juxtaposition of Kylo Ren and Ben Solo. She highly doubted that Kylo Ren would be so emotional after sex.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know where she managed to hide a lightsaber, either.
> 
> Realtalk: sex is often weird and awkward and funny, especially when doing it for the first time (in general or the first time with someone new), and crying after sex actually isn’t all that uncommon. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for many people. Hormonal build-up from really intense sex does that to some people. But Rey cries so much in TLJ that I couldn’t resist making her cry because of something Ben/Kylo Ren did or said yet again.
> 
> [Spot](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/944383072518246400) [the tweet](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/944321729433931777) (come on, you HAD to know that this one would be making an appearance)
> 
> PS - Please feel free to let me know if this was too much. It's been a looooong time since I wrote anything even remotely erotic. I wasn't trying to be 100% serious, but I was going for something at least somewhat realistic.


	5. Is this how you do the morning after?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That throne room scene was 100% metaphorical sex, which is the best Disney/Lucasfilm could do. Good thing we all have fanfiction to fill in the blanks, right?
> 
> PS - I've added a bonus chapter :)

Despite the fact that the night before, Rey had sworn that they only needed to bang once just to get it out of their systems, they ended up having sex in the shower. Then again after the shower. Then they fell asleep, spooning (which was surprisingly comfortable; it had been Ben’s idea). Then they woke up in the middle of the night and went at it again. And then, finally, they woke up when it was light out, and had sleepy, sweet morning sex. Rey thought her vagina was going to fall out by the time they finished the last round.

 

She showered alone, figuring that despite how tapped out they were, they were still going to have a really difficult time keeping their hands off each other if they tried showering together.

 

Rey got dressed as Ben showered, thinking about where things stood with them. If she’d thought it was complicated before, it was a thousand times more complicated now. It wasn’t too difficult to pretend that he didn’t bring out some extreme passion in her before they’d kissed, but it was impossible to deny now. And it was equally impossible to deny that she didn’t want anyone else to even try to bring out that same amount of passion in her.

 

She was so, so, so, so screwed. (Well, obviously. Five times in one night was a lot, even for people at their fitness levels. But _emotionally_ as well as physically.)

 

She heard the shower turn off, then Ben stepped out a moment later, a towel wrapped around his waist. She forced herself to look away from him, and he muttered something about needing to find clean clothes. She didn’t look back, even as she heard the door shut behind him.

 

Right. So. Mission successes: she witnessed the start of the collapse of the First Order. She helped Ben one-up that ginger guy he hated so much. She finally got laid.

 

Mission failures: the other half of her getting laid was about to head a civil war in his organization, which was dangerous and might get him killed and oh Force, why did she care so much if he got killed? Hadn’t they tried to kill each other before? Why did that have to change now?

 

She didn’t want to sort out her jumbled feelings, and she could feel a similar set of jumbled feelings coming down the other end of the bond. She tried to shut them out, then, when that proved nearly impossible, she ignored them. Had they irrevocably forced (or Forced) their bond so widely open that they wouldn’t ever be able to shut it again?

 

Kriff. She just wanted to run away and hide and pretend that this had never happened, but he was her ride out of there. That flight was going to be so awkward that she was probably going to curl up and die.

 

* * *

 

Not that Ben had anything to compare it to, given the fact that canonically the sexiest thing that he had ever done was beat down the Praetorian guard with Rey, but he doubted that sex would be that amazing with anyone else in the entire galaxy. Which was a problem, because now he wanted Rey by his side even more, and he had no idea if she felt the same. He could feel a muddle of feelings coming from her, but he didn’t want to poke around in them. He didn’t think he’d be able to survive if he found out that she 100% hadn’t changed her mind about joining him, and he had a family history of dying from heartbreak. Ask his grandmother.

 

But then again, things were probably about to get so dangerous with the civil war breaking out in the First Order, that it was probably safer to keep her as far away from it as possible.

 

Force, he didn’t want to face her again. As long as he could hide here in this room, he wouldn’t have to face the fact that they weren’t free to just be together. But he couldn’t hide in there forever. For one, he had to get Rey back to her ship. For another, he’d only paid for one night at the hotel.

 

As much as he wanted to avoid acknowledging any of the thoughts coming down the other end of the bond, he could easily pick out that she wanted to deal with this as much as he did.

 

He sighed and packed up his things, knowing that she was doing the same. Was there any way out of this conundrum? He didn’t know if he’d be able to live without her now. Not only because they had just had so much mind-blowing sex, but because he could no longer deny the fact that he was madly in love with her and he didn’t know how to handle such a strong emotion. He should have been taught better coping mechanisms growing up, but he supposed that given his parents’ occupations and how emotionless his Jedi training had been, he got about as much as expected.

 

An hour later, he still hadn’t worked up the courage to go knock at her door to tell her that it was time to leave, but he knew that he needed to bring her back so that they could both resume their normal lives. But he wanted her to stay there and fix him instead of whatever else it was that she had planned, as if he were a hyperdrive.

 

But he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. With a sigh, he stood up and left his room. He knocked on her door without saying anything. What could he possibly say, anyway? He didn’t think that he had the words to capture everything he was thinking, and anyway, it wasn’t like he even needed actual words with their ever-growing Force bond. Having sex probably hadn’t helped that little problem, either.

 

They went down the elevator in silence. Neither of them said anything as they boarded his ship, took off, and left Coruscant behind them. She was sitting in the copilot seat as they took off, but a few minutes after they put the ship on autopilot, she stood up to walk out of the cockpit.

 

“Wait,” he said, grabbing her arm. She gave him an apprehensive look. “We should talk.”

 

She swallowed. “What is there to talk about?” she said quietly. “I’m not going to change my mind. You’re not going to change your mind. We’re stuck on two sides of a galactic war.”

 

Something in his heart broke a little bit. “What if we ran away together?” he said, knowing it was the stupidest idea he’d ever had.

 

“And go where?” she said. “What would we do? What would you do? You’re the most powerful man in the galaxy. How will you hide that? Will you dye your hair blonde and call yourself Matt the radar technician?”

 

“Why can’t I?” he retorted.

 

“Because you can’t!” she shouted, pulling her arm out of his grasp. “You have to go back to the First Order and get a hold on things. You can’t just leave it in shambles. You can’t let your stupid general take it over. Who knows what he’ll do? He looks like he gets off on genocide.”

 

_If Hux did get off on genocide, that would explain a lot,_ he thought.

 

“Look, Ben,” she said, her eyes softening. “There’s going to be a civil war. The Resistance is going to sit back and watch the First Order tear itself apart, because why would we bother to ruin you when you’re going to do it yourselves. And as much as I--” Her voice caught, as if she was struggling to get the words out. “As much as I want to be with you,” she said, barely louder than a whisper, “we can’t make it work. There’s nothing we can do to change things.”

 

“What if there was?” he asked.

 

“How, Ben?” she said. He could tell she was holding back tears now.

 

“If I get control of the First Order,” he said, thinking quickly. “Then I can help us change. It won’t happen overnight. Hell, it won’t even happen in a year. It’s going to take a long, long time. But I can work to change the culture from the top, bit by bit. And eventually, I can dismantle the First Order. I can use what’s left of it to help create another republic.”

 

“Do you actually think that’s realistic?” she asked.

 

“I want to be redeemed for my sins,” he breathed. And that was the truth. He didn’t think it was ever going to be possible. Even his revered grandfather hadn’t committed patricide. But he’d been good since he’d taken over Snoke’s position. He’d had the opportunity to do several bad things, but he hadn’t done them. Well, okay. He had done some of them, but he’d felt bad afterwards, which he thought should count. Rey opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, he continued in a rush. “I don’t know if I ever will be. I don’t know if it’s possible. But I want to try. And I can start by changing things with the First Order.”

 

“But only if you go back to them,” she said quietly.

 

“Only if I go back to them,” he echoed. He knew that he couldn’t ask her to come with him again. Her answer was going to be the same. It would always be the same. And as romantic as star-crossed lovers were in holovids and books, it was devastating to be like that for real.

 

“Ben,” she said, taking his hands in hers. “I lo--I feel very strongly about you,” she said. He knew what she meant. And as badly as he needed to hear her say it to his face, he knew she never would. She was too stubborn and too focused on her own self-preservation for that. “I think I always will. There’s a bond between us. Maybe it would be there anyway without the Force bond. Either way, we can’t change that. We’ll always be connected.” There was an unspoken sense of ‘I don’t know how to finish this statement’ coming from her. He didn’t know how to finish it, either.

 

They spent the rest of the flight back to where they’d stashed the Falcon in silence, Rey’s hands in his, her head resting on her shoulder. They arrived all too soon, and then Rey left in silence, and Ben found himself glued to the seat. Then he stood up. He knew what he had to do.

 

“Rey!” he shouted, running off his ship. The ramp to the Falcon was open, and she was standing halfway up it. She turned to look at him, and he was once again struck by how beautiful she was.

 

He ran until he was stopped in front of her. Then he grabbed her and kissed her one last time. “I love you,” he said as she pulled away.

 

She smiled sadly. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

Rey spent the ride back to the Resistance base obsessing over what to tell them. It was going to be easy to tell them that the First Order had broken out in civil war. That was the best possible scenario, and it was going to make all of their lives considerably easier. But what else could she tell them? There was no way any of them would understand the bond that she and Ben had, and she didn’t want to have to try to explain herself. No matter how much her friends trusted her, if she revealed anything about what had happened between her and Ben, they were never going to be able to look at her the same again. Especially his mother.

 

_Thank Force we’re stuck in a colder climate,_ she thought as she inspected herself in the mirror. Her neck and shoulders were covered in little marks, and she was sure that she had long scratch marks running down her back. She pressed one of the little bruises on her neck and smiled. Things may have been completely messed up between them, but at least they’d had a bunch of mind-blowing sex before they parted ways. She wouldn’t let herself think about their future.

 

Then the flight was over all-too-quickly, and then she was landing. She spotted Finn, Poe, Rose, and some of the other members of the Resistance running out to meet her ship. _Here we go,_ she thought, trying to hold her as confidently as possible.

 

It was easier than she had expected to fill in the Resistance about the current status of the First Order. Nobody asked for details, which was lucky, and they actually broke out some space champagne to celebrate. Rey had yet to see General Organa, but she knew she had to be around somewhere. She didn’t know if Leia was reluctant to see her because she didn’t want to hear about her estranged son, or if she was just busy doing something else.

 

But it eventually had to happen. Leia ran out and hugged Rey as she saw her. “You’re all right,” she breathed as she let Rey go. “I was so worried.”

 

“Everything’s fine,” Rey said quickly. She took a sip of champagne to stop herself from blurting anything else out.

 

“Are you sure?” said Leia. “Because I felt a disturbance in the Force. Multiple times. All through last night and into this morning.”

 

Rey spit out her champagne.

 

* * *

 

Two months later, Ben still couldn’t get her out of his head. Neither of them had made contact across the Force bond, but that was mostly because they were trying to avoid each other. It would be too painful to see each other again. Besides, he was busy trying to take back control of the First Order. It turned out that Hux hadn’t convinced nearly as many people as Ben had assumed, and Ben was able to convince the undecided members of the crew to stick with him by promising them better pay and benefits. Hux didn’t manage any of the payroll, so he had nothing to counter that offer with. And even though neither of them was a particularly charismatic leader, Hux’s tendency to get hard whenever he talked of blasting planets out of the sky made him even less likeable than Kylo Ren.

 

With control regained, Ben set off for the next part of the plan: slowly introduce changes into the First Order to make it generally less evil and better for the galaxy. As he’d told Rey, it wasn’t going to be easy, and it wasn’t going to happen quickly. But it was a start, and he started hoping that news of the new management that the First Order was under was making its way across the galaxy and into the ears of the Resistance.

 

One night, after undressing for bed and shutting out the light, he started thinking about Rey. Well okay, this was something that ended up happening every night. He hadn’t been able to get the memories out of his head, and he had started to add more fantasies about her, now that he had firsthand experience of what she was like in bed. Sometimes he felt a similar flash of something across the bond, but it had been mostly quiet. It was easier to pretend he didn’t miss her when he didn’t have to deal with flashes of her thoughts or, Force forbid, actually seeing her.

 

But tonight was different. He felt something new. And he realized that both he and Rey had let down the barriers just enough to make contact. He could sense what she had on her mind. She was alone in her room, and she was thinking about him. This was his chance.

 

_Rey,_ he said across the bond from parsecs away. _U up?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note on Padme's death: I know [she doesn't actually die from heartbreak](http://saferincages.tumblr.com/post/170125858871/reyloficked-chiruttimwes-ohfuckthisshit), but my headcanon is that if you sat Kylo down and made him watch the prequel trilogy, that is what he would take from Anakin and Padme's relationship because deep down he is a sucker for romantic tragedies.
> 
> [Spot](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/943869461119021056) [the](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/945002534464311296) [tweet](https://twitter.com/KyloR3n/status/943709267034607617).


	6. How dare Kylo Ren bring a better date than Armitage Hux?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some one-sided kylux with your reylo.

Kylo Ren was the worst.

 

If it weren’t for the fact that he’d experienced the kind of Force-magic Ren was capable of, Hux would never have understood why Snoke had kept him around for so long. And even then, Hux barely understood why Snoke kept him around. Sure, the little shit was strong in the Force (whatever that meant), but he was unhinged, immature, and far too prone to violent outbursts.

 

Well, okay. To be fair, that last one wasn’t a bad quality to have when in charge of the First Order. Someone had to have the spine to remind all of their lessers just who ruled them.

 

There was one other reason why Hux hated Ren, though. It was something that he was always careful to keep hidden whenever Ren was around. He didn’t know how much of the whole “Kylo Ren can read minds” stuff was true, but he didn’t want to risk Ren finding out.

 

Kylo Ren was really, really hot.

 

It was something that most people didn’t know. Ren was so obsessed with looking like his idol that he willingly walked around dressed like a man who had lost most of his limbs and had to hide under imposing robes and a helmet out of necessity. People didn’t often see his face, let alone the rest of his body. But Hux had seen it. He’d caught a few glances when running into Ren at the gym. As part of senior management of the First Order, they had a special members-only gym that they were allowed to use. Hux didn’t give a shit about working out--he had plenty of underlings to fight his physical battles for him, and he was fully capable of taking on his mental ones--but as soon as he realized that Ren spent a considerable amount of time there half-dressed and helmetless, Hux had started making it a point to work out more.

 

It was really difficult to reconcile the fact that he desperately wanted to fuck someone he hated so much. It wasn’t like there weren’t other options around. As a high-ranking commander, he could have pretty much anyone he wanted. There were always men willing to warm his bed, hoping that he could get them a promotion. Idiots. It took a lot more than a good fuck to get promoted in the First Order.

 

So why did Ren get under his skin so much?

 

Sometimes, Hux wondering if Ren felt the same. There was always so much tension between them. Sure, it was probably that they were more or less fighting to be Snoke’s favorite little killer, but there was something more to it. But then again, it was hard to tell where anyone stood, because they all existed in such a sexless universe.

 

So Hux started scheming. He figured that once he got it out of his system, it would be fine, and he could go back to wanting to kill Kylo Ren in peace. Step one was to figure out if Ren even swung his way. Again, they existed in a sexless universe, so it was hard to know. Hux started tracking Ren, keeping careful notes of the people he interacted with and how he interacted with them. This proved to be ineffectual, because Ren treated everyone, regardless of gender, the same way: disdainful at best, actively murderous at worst.

 

Right. Time for Plan B, then, since Plan “Stalk Kylo Ren For Evidence Of His Sexual Orientation” was a bust.

 

Even though running a massive fascist galactic organization was a full-time job and then some, they still had time off, and the starships all had bars. After all, there had to be ways of blowing off steam other than killing their underlings. If that was the only thing they did when they were stressed out, there’d be no one left to monitor security cameras and clean up the blood of their victims, or whatever those people did. So one evening, after a long, grueling day of meetings, Hux dragged Ren down to one of the bars.

 

“What are we doing here, Hux?” Ren asked sulkily. Snoke hadn’t been too happy with him. Something about some girl from Jakku.

 

“We,” said Hux, ordering them some shots, “are drinking as a way to end a horrible day.” He put three shots in front of Ren, then took three for himself. Considering the guy never drank, he probably didn’t need much to get him buzzed.

 

Or did he? He was pretty big. And he worked out a lot.

 

“What am I supposed to do with these, Hux?” Ren asked, pointing at the shots.

 

“Take your helmet off, pick one up, dump it down your throat, swallow. Repeat. Repeat.” Hux picked one of his own shots up and slugged it back to demonstrate.

 

Ren didn’t move. Hux could practically feel him glowering at him through the helmet. “I will ask again: What. Are. We. Doing. Here?”

 

“I told you,” said Hux, starting to get a little nervous. “We’re here to drink and blow off some steam after a long-ass day. You need to relax more, Ren. You’re too uptight.”

 

“I am not _uptight,_ ” Ren hissed, but he removed his helmet and set it down on the bar. Hux had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the sight of Ren’s helmet sitting on the bar while he awkwardly tried to take shots for the first time in his life. He knocked back all three of them in about five seconds. Hux had to admit that he was impressed by it.

 

“Done. Can I put my helmet back on yet?”

 

“No,” said Hux, waving down the bartender to order some more shots. “We need more drinks.”

 

“What’s the point of this?”

 

Hux had to restrain himself from thinking _I want to get you drunk so that I can hit on you._ Ren would probably somehow hear that. Instead, he said, “The point is to loosen up. I need to blow off some steam. You need to blow off some steam. We can make this work.”

 

“I don’t need to blow off some steam,” Ren said grumpily.

 

“Ren, I heard you destroy an entire conference room today.”

 

“So?”

 

“So, you need these drinks.” The bartender poured more shots, and they each did two more.

 

Half an hour later, Hux realized his mistake. Five shots in the space of ten minutes on an empty stomach? He was on his way to a disaster. Not that he was _bad_ at holding his liquor, but he didn’t exactly have the best alcohol tolerance, and everyone knew not to drink Seikosha tequila on an empty stomach.

 

The only consolation was that Ren looked to be in an equally bad state. Hux supposed that Ren hadn’t eaten dinner, either. Too busy trashing that conference room.

 

“Come on,” Hux said, trying not to slur his words. “We can’t go anywhere like this. Let’s go back to my suite and order food.”

 

Ren blinked. “Food?” _How does he manage to look so good even with that huge scar running down his face?_ Hux wondered. He prayed that Ren was too drunk to pick up on that thought.

 

“Yeah, food. It goes well with booze.” Hux stood up carefully, knowing from experience how easy it was to trip and make a total ass of himself when standing for the first time after drinking, and the last thing he needed to do with Plan ‘Get Kylo Ren Drunk And See What Happens’ was to make a total ass of himself. It was so _difficult_ to get Ren to act like an actual human being instead of some weird quasi-Sith, Force-choking dark monk. Hux couldn’t afford to screw this up.

 

Luckily, the stars were on his side, and he was able to slide smoothly off of the bar stool. He grabbed Ren’s arm, which was definitely not something he’d ever dare to do while sober, and pulled. “Come on. Follow me.”

 

Ren shoved his arm away, but he didn’t say anything as he put his helmet back on and followed Hux out of the bar. Hux realized with a petty satisfaction that Ren didn’t appear to be holding his liquor any better than Hux was. Both of them were having a hard time walking in a straight line. Hux gave a silent thank-you to whoever decided that his room assignment should be so close to one of the on-board bars, and they were lucky enough that they didn’t run into anyone on their way back to his rooms.

 

Once inside, he summoned a service droid and ordered some food. He sent the droid away and shut the door, then turned to see Ren standing in the middle of the floor awkwardly.

 

“Take off that damn helmet,” he said as he pushed Ren down onto the couch and flopped down beside him. Things were going well. So far, Ren hadn’t tried to kill him, nor had he outright rejected anything Hux had said. They hadn’t talked much. Neither of them wanted to talk about work when they were trying to blow off some steam, and they didn’t have a whole lot in common otherwise. Ren was reluctant to talk about himself, and Hux didn’t care enough to ask. The only thing he wanted from him was his body.

 

And maybe that Force-choke thing. Lately Hux had spent a lot of time wondering if he was into that, but it wasn’t like he could just _ask_ Ren to do that. Not if it was going to make him pop a boner in the middle of a meeting. It was difficult enough to keep from getting noticeably aroused whenever they started discussing total destruction of planets. Something about having all that power at their disposal _and_ actually using said power was just so hot.

 

“Why are we doing this, Hux?” Ren asked again as he removed his helmet.

 

“Because I’m trying to get you to act like an actual human for once,” Hux said, watching Ren as he smoothed his hair. Why did Ren have to have such pretty hair? It wasn’t fair.

 

“I’m human,” Ren said, scowling.

 

“It’s hard to tell with the way you completely cover up like that,” said Hux. Were they drunk enough that he could risk reaching out to touch Ren’s face for emphasis? Before his brain could catch up with his body, he found himself doing just that.

 

“Don’t touch me,” Ren said, brushing Hux’s hand away. Hux took it as a promising sign that Ren had brushed his hand away and not tossed him to the other side of the room with the Force.

 

Hux was saved from having to respond to that by the arrival of the service droid. It placed a tray of food on the table in front of the sofa and then left. Hux locked the door behind it. When he turned back to the sofa, he found that Ren was already poking at the food.

 

“Why do you cover up?” Hux asked, sitting back down next to Ren. “It can’t possibly be because you think you’re ugly.” He noticed that Ren’s cheeks turned red and had to hold back at smile.

 

“I don’t care if I’m ugly or not,” he said, sounding a little unsteady.

 

“You don’t? I find that hard to believe. Everyone cares if they’re ugly or not. Men, women, humans, Nautolans, Wookees, droids…” Well, droids probably didn’t give a shit, but there was always the possibility that some of them could develop glitches that made them give a shit about their beauty.

 

“No. Definitely not. My physical attractiveness definitely has nothing to do with my decision to dress as my idol, Darth Vader.”

 

Hux rolled his eyes. This again. Still, he couldn’t let it go. “Well, I think you should quit with the whole outfit. At the very least, dump the helmet.”

 

Ren turned to look at him. “Excuse me?” he asked. Hux saw his fingers twitch, and he found himself hoping that Ren would opt to Force choke him, just a little bit.

 

“You’re a very attractive person, Kylo Ren,” Hux said. Thank Force for booze. He never would have been able to say something like that sober.

 

“I--” Hux smirked as Ren’s face turned bright red. “Shut up,” he said without any heat.

 

Hux shrugged.

 

After they’d finished eating, Hux started to feel a little clearer. Which was good because he needed a clear (ish) head, but bad because Ren was also probably starting to sober up. So Hux moved on to the next step of the plan.

 

“Want to watch some old Death Star footage?” he asked, reaching for the remote to turn on the holoscreen.

 

“How did you know that I like watching old Death Star footage?” asked Ren.

 

Hux shrugged. “Just a guess. It involves your idol. And I love watching the sheer destructive power of it.” It was actually pretty much porn for him. But Ren didn’t have to know that. Not until Hux was sure that he was into it, too.

 

“Of course you do,” muttered Ren as the footage started playing.

 

Hux kept an eye on Ren while they watched the footage. Ren was obviously still drunk and he was definitely enjoying the old Death Star holovids. _Quick. Now’s your chance._ Hux leaned into Ren just a little bit. The sofa they were on wasn’t big, so it was easy to shift around and pretend he was just trying to get more comfortable as he leaned into Ren.

 

To his surprise, Ren didn’t shove him off. Not encouraging, but not discouraging, either. Emboldened by that, Hux leaned over to rest his head on Ren’s shoulder.

 

“What are you doing?” Ren said, tensing.

 

“Sorry,” Hux said. “Just trying to get comfortable.” He didn’t move his head. Ren didn’t push him off, but he was still tense. Hux suspected that if they had been sober, Ren would have a lightsaber to his throat by now, but drunk Ren didn’t give enough of a shit to do anything about it. “Relax,” he whispered into Ren’s ear. Ren shivered, but he didn’t do anything to stop Hux.

 

They stayed like that for a while. Hux figured things were safe for now, but he didn’t want to throw too much at Ren too quickly. When Ren finally started to relax a little bit, Hux decided to ramp it up. He put one of his hands on Ren’s thigh.

 

Ren jump up. “You know what?” he said suddenly. Hux’s heart sank. “I--I have to go--I promised--training--Rey--” he sputtered. He picked up his helmet, shoved it on his head, and all but sprinted out of Hux’s room.

 

Hux cursed. That fucking scavenger. It was all _her_ fault that he couldn’t seduce Kylo Ren.

 

* * *

 

That fucking scavenger. _Again_. Kylo Ren was completely obsessed with her. Hux suspected that there was more to the story than “that sand rat from Jakku killed Snoke and the entire Praetorian guard, then disabled Ren” story than Ren had given him, but he didn’t want to question it. Ren would get suspicious if Hux was acting like he was looking for excuses to get Force choked.

 

Besides, clearly Ren was obsessed with the girl, and clearly he wasn’t going to let it go. It was one of his many qualities that Hux hated.

 

Hux also hated the girl because she completely shut the door on any chance he had of getting into Ren’s pants. No matter Ren’s sexual orientation, it was clear that nobody had gotten under his skin quite like this girl. So Hux did something that he swore he’d never stoop to as a last-ditch effort:

 

He told Ren he was bringing a Nautolan _female_ to the First Order Anniversary Party just to make Ren jealous.

 

But that hadn’t even worked! Hux had thought that for sure, if he brought the most famous holovid star in the galaxy, it would make Ren look at him differently. But instead, he just _had_ to tell Hux that he already had a date--and it was _that fucking scavenger_.

 

There was only one thing left to do: mutiny. Kylo Ren had to die. If Hux couldn’t have him, nobody could.

 

Amazingly, word never got to Ren’s ears that Hux was planning to turn on him at the First Order Anniversary Party. The bonus of having it happen at the party was that they could take the (allegedly) Snoke-killing Jedi wannabe down with them. True, word probably hadn’t reached Ren because he didn’t have a whole lot of people on his side, but he had enough that he thought he could make it work. Besides, he doubted that the commanders and generals of the First Order would be willing to let their leader take a half-cooked Jedi that he was so obviously obsessed with as his date to the biggest First Order party of the year.

 

* * *

 

It hadn’t worked.

 

How had it not worked? It was the perfect plan. Yet somehow, that little shit _still_ had more people loyal to him than to Hux! And now Hux was sort of on the run, except not completely because he still had command over a significant number of First Order resources. He was going to bring Ren down, even though Hux had absolutely no desire to be Supreme Leader. He just wanted to make Kylo Ren suffer.

 

All because of this question: how _dare_ Kylo Ren bring a better date to the dance than him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: my working title for this was 'Hux wants to hatefuck Kylo Ren.'
> 
> Thank you all so much for your kudos and comments! You have no idea how much it means to me to know that you guys have enjoyed this. This story is finished, but I'm open to any prompts or suggestions that you guys have. I have a tumblr that I haven't used much since, like, 2013, but please feel free to find me on there @radioactivesaltghoul (I'm more active now that TLJ has reawakened my desire to obsess about fandom). The reylo fandom is so sweet and I would love to hear from you guys!

**Author's Note:**

> If you have read this far, thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has left comments and kudos. I'm extremely flattered that you guys like this crazy thing that my mind spit out, and you're all so sweet for telling me so! Please feel free to find me on tumblr @radioactivesaltghoul. I'd love to engage with the reylo fandom a bit more, and I'm open to suggestions for more fics :)
> 
> Update 14 Jan: There's a sequel up called "Armitage Hux can hold one hell of a grudge." Please check it out if you want more from these two :)


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